Roughly one year ago, on Jan. 8, 2021, acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller unwittingly requested that I assist him in committing an unlawful act by using our National Guard soldiers and airmen as a domestic police force against American citizens in response to the events of Jan. 6, 2021. As the commanding general of the Arizona National Guard, I refused, because the request was clearly unlawful.
I placed my objections to Miller’s request in writing on Jan. 15, 2021. Since then, these clear violations of U.S. law have been ignored by the Department of Defense (DoD), corporate media, and even the House of Representatives’ Select Committee tasked with investigating the events of Jan. 6.
On Jan. 8, 2021, in response to the unrest two days earlier, DoD requested every state to mobilize National Guard troops to the nation’s capital. Fifty-three of the 54 U.S. states and territories granted that request, and Arizona stood alone in opposition to the unlawful request.
The Posse Comitatus Act, Department of Defense Directive 3025.18, and Department of Defense Instruction 3025.21 prohibit the use of military personnel to execute civilian laws, making it unlawful for a government official to use military members to police civilians in the United States. Unless properly authorized, using military members to engage in search, seizure, arrest, apprehension, stop and frisk, brandishing a weapon, security functions, crowd and traffic control, operating, manning, or staffing checkpoints, or surveillance or pursuit of individuals is simply illegal. Those, of course, include some of the exact illegal activities demanded by Mr. Miller and other senior military officials.