Donald Trump's former White House advisers worry that, if he's elected again, he could misuse a dangerous "doomsday book" to hurt his personal enemies and enhance his own power, an expert said Saturday.
TIME magazine senior White House correspondent Brian Bennett, who conducted more than a dozen interviews with current and former national security officials about the so-called "doomsday book," appeared on MSNBC over the weekend to discuss his findings. He said that Trump's own aides worried that the former president might discover his powers under the book, including suspending judicial rights under habeas corpus, putting parts of the country under military control, and restricting Americans' travel rights.
MSNBC host Alex Witt said national security officials are "sounding the alarm" over Trump's potential use of the "extraordinary emergency powers" outlined in the book, and asked Bennett what he found.
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"People who worked for Donald Trump in the national security arena when he was president, they are concerned about him learning the specifics of the extraordinary presidential powers that are available to him under extreme circumstances like the event of a major catastrophe or nuclear attack, for example," Bennett said. "These powers are outlined in a secret book inside the White House known as a doomsday book."
He noted that the "technical term" for the doomsday book is the "Presidential emergency action documents," and that it's "a stack of papers kept in a secure location on the White House grounds."
"It has taken 40 years of legal review and legal opinions to look at what powers the president has based on the Constitution and what laws have passed to keep the government going under extreme circumstances, like congress gets completely wiped out or there is a nuclear attack on a major city," he added. "There is concern Trump, if he becomes president again, would exaggerate a catastrophe and try to turn to these powers in order to extract revenge against rivals or exercise presidential power in an extraordinary and unusual way."
