READ: Trump flaunted "magical authorities." Soon he will use them.

The president is on the brink of invoking the Insurrection Act, which will set off constitutional chaos in the United States.

Five years ago, I came forward publicly to reveal something disturbing about then-President Donald Trump: he believed he possessed special powers — presidential authorities so vast, so unchecked, that he could do things that were otherwise illegal and get away with it.

“I have magical authorities,” he told us matter-of-factly.

Those were his words, not mine, and he believed them. Back in office, he’s getting ready to use those powers against his own people.

Back then, I’d recently quit as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, and I’d seen the president grow increasingly obsessed with the idea of taking wartime action inside the United States. He wanted to know what the limits of his authority were and what extreme circumstances would allow him to enforce his will, unchecked. Trump’s lawyers pointed him to the Insurrection Act, a centuries-old law allowing presidents to deploy the military to quell uprisings or enforce domestic law.

To most presidents, this would be a last resort. They would only send in uniformed military if there was a total breakdown of public order, local authorities couldn’t enforce the law, or America was at war. To Trump though, the idea became a temptation that gnawed at him.

He fixated on deploying the military onto U.S. city streets when he was told that doing something was illegal. On more than one occasion, I watched him flirt with the idea. In 2019, for instance, we rushed to the White House when we found out Trump wanted to surprise the country during his State of the Union address and announce that he was sending the military to take over the Southern border. He was practicing his remarks in the Map Room when we arrived. He was talked out of it.

We were lucky that time, but today the restraints are gone.

Donald Trump has spent years teasing the use of the Insurrection Act to impose quasi martial law in the United States. He appears ready to do it.

The Insurrection Act, passed in 1807, was originally intended to protect the nation against foreign invasion or rebellion. Its vague language gives the president just enough leeway to unilaterally declare an emergency and send the military into American communities without the consent of governors or mayors. It’s the closest thing to martial law in our system of government.

Trump kept it in his back pocket. As I noted, he took to referring to it and similar powers as his “magical authorities,” and other Cabinet agencies saw him inch closer to using it, including again in 2020 in response to racial justice protests. I thought his private musings were a disturbing insight into how he viewed his role as commander-in-chief. Since then, he’s made his views clear to the American people.

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be,” he said during the pandemic.

“And then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President,” he also said.

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he wrote on X.

“A lot of people are saying: ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator,” he said recently.

To Donald Trump, emergency presidential powers are not constitutional safeguards, they are cheat codes. Years ago, I explained that Trump seemed to be using this playbook on January 6, 2021. He seemingly wanted to goad supporters into attacking the Capitol to provide the pretext for calling out the troops and further delaying the transfer of power. Even though the effort failed, we later found out that’s exactly what militant groups were egging him on to do.

The president won’t miss the opportunity this time around. In recent months, he’s begun testing how the courts will respond to troop deployments, starting with LA and Washington, D.C. Frustrated that those troops aren’t supposed to do much more than protect federal buildings and provide support to local cops, he’s started to push the boundaries by arming them and having them make arrests. He’s seeing if he can get away with military actions on U.S. soil without using his controversial powers, and he’s starting to get feedback.

Last week, federal judges declared that Trump’s use of the Marines in Los Angeles was illegal, precisely because he used them to police the streets without proper authorization, such as the Insurrection Act, that could have allowed him to do so. The message has been received inside the White House, which is why I expect Trump will soon cite those powers explicitly.

Indeed, the president seems to be trying to incite a mob. His strident declarations about the coming crackdowns in Chicago, Baltimore, and other “Democrat” cities, sound like a man bent on provoking the opposition — in the hope that they’ll overreact. If there’s violence, he’ll have the narrative advantage for saying he has “no other choice” than to wield his emergency powers.

White House aides want to move fast. They know that Trump will be sued the moment he cites the Insurrection Act. But they’ve been trying to force lawsuits quickly so that they can get the Supreme Court to rule early in Trump’s second term. The goal is to get favorable rulings that will greenlight the permanent use of extraordinary powers, which is why they’ve frontloaded their most extreme actions, from sweeping purges of federal agencies to mass military deployments.

But this will be different than anything we’ve seen thus far. If Trump actually invokes the Insurrection Act, the country will be on the brink of constitutional chaos. He will claim total authority to take over specific localities. Governors will push back hard because they’ll have to, and cities will resist. As the protests multiply, Trump will use that reaction to justify even more crackdowns, just as authoritarians have done throughout history.

None of this is errant speculation. The preparations have been happening in plain sight. Leaked memos show DHS officials talking to Pentagon leaders about domestic military deployments “for years to come.” And last week Trump ordered the National Guard to prepare a quick-reaction force that he can deploy anywhere in America at a moment’s notice for “quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety.”

Whoever thought this was just about immigration is a fool.

People must stop pretending that Trump won’t go this far or that he’s joking, as his allies want us to believe. He’s not. His plans are being operationalized. And we cannot prepare for it by refusing the uncomfortable truth. If Donald Trump invokes the Insurrection Act in the coming weeks or months, remember this: he told us exactly what he would do. He bragged about it. He fantasized about it. His aides warned us about it. The real question will be, did we listen?

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