Former Pentagon adviser Ryan Goodman says former President Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to hold onto power during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters.

“There needs to be reform of the Insurrection Act,” says Goodman, who authored the report Crisis of Command: The Pentagon, the President, and January 6 for Just Security, where he is co-editor.

He also discusses how Republican leadership from Congress, as well as agency heads from the FBI and the Justice Department, waged a coordinated response around Trump’s claims of voter fraud in an attempt to increase Republican voter turnout in Georgia.

“The Justice Department used a lot of its resources, including the FBI investigations, to basically affect the outcome of the Georgia runoffs,” says Goodman.

“That’s an extraordinary politicized use of the Justice Department and the FBI to do anything like that, to try to use it to shape an outcome of the election.”

Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. Our reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of the world’s most pressing issues. 

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