Issue a "Proclamation to Disperse" before invoking the powers of the Insurrection Act

U.S. President Donald Trump has declined to admit defeat in the Nov. 3 presidential election, claiming the results are fraudulent and supporters are proposing mobilizing troops under the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to put down unrest if he won. So what does the president need to do and why?

POTUS can use the insurrection act to call into service the US Armed Forces to address a conspiracy, in any state, which results in the deprivation of Constitutionally-secured rights, and where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect said rights.

Under the U.S. Constitution, governors of U.S. states have primary authority to maintain order within state borders. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars the federal military from participating in domestic law enforcement.

POTUS needs to issue a "Proclamation to Disperse" before invoking the powers of the Insurrection Act.

The measures necessary to guarantee National Security from external threats are not subject to the same limitations.

The act gives a president “awesome powers” and should be used as a last resort, said retired Army Major General John Altenburg, now a Washington lawyer.

Yes, the U.S. government could activate, or “federalize,” the Army National Guard, a reserve force of part-time soldiers. These civilian soldiers are usually activated by governors, but federal law also allows the U.S. government to mobilize them.

Once federalized, National Guard soldiers are under the full command and control of the defense secretary until they are returned to state status.

10 U.S. Code § 254 - Proclamation to disperse

Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.

The Insurrection Act authorizes "the President to employ the armed forces during a natural disaster or terrorist attack." The original text of the act, which has been amended several times since it was first passed, reads as follows:

Insurrection Act of 1807

An Act authorizing the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States, in cases of insurrections
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the pre-requisites of the law in that respect.
APPROVED, March 3, 1807.

The act was last invoked in 1992 to quell the Los Angeles riots after the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a black man, and before that in 1989 during widespread looting in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, after Hurricane Hugo.

When a president claims that the facts on the ground warrant invocation of the Insurrection Act, courts ordinarily would not second-guess this.

The Trump administration has the lawful authority to use the agents, according to most legal experts.

We will have to wait and see if the president will invoke the Insurrection Act.

#InsurrectionAct