The anonymous “resistance” op-ed author claims a group of senior Trump administration officials considered resigning together last year to draw attention to President Trump’s behavior.
But this plan for a “midnight self-massacre” never came to fruition out of fear it would cast the government into greater chaos, according to the upcoming book A Warning obtained by the Washington Post.
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The latest revelation from the tell-all book from an anonymous Trump administration official is reminiscent of another reported plan by high-level Trump officials considering an act of defiance: the “suicide pact” three of Trump’s Cabinet members made in 2017. As one United States official told BuzzFeed at the time, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had struck a deal with former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in which all three would leave if one of them became a target of the president.
Of the trio, only Mnuchin remains in Trump’s Cabinet. Tillerson was fired in March 2018 and Mattis resigned from office in December over disagreements with Trump over U.S. policy in Syria.
Another disclosure from A Warning claims high-level White House officials put together a “back-of-the-envelope” tally on what Cabinet members they thought would be willing to sign a letter to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, declaring the president unfit to perform his duties after he fired FBI Director James Comey.
These officials believed Vice President Mike Pence would be in favor of using the 25th Amendment if a majority of the Cabinet agreed to it, but nothing ever materialized from those discussions. Pence and his office have denied he was privy to any discussions about such an effort to remove Trump and grant Pence the role of acting president.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the book a “work of fiction.”
The Justice Department sent a warning to the anonymous author’s publisher saying the book may breach “one or more nondisclosure agreements” signed prior to working in the White House, but the release date of the book remains fixed on Nov. 19.
