00:00Hi, it's Brian Bennett. I'm the senior White House correspondent for Time.
00:03Let me tell you about the Doomsday Book, what it is, and why former Trump administration officials are concerned
00:10about Trump getting a hold of it in the second term. First,
00:13what's the Doomsday Book? The Doomsday Book is a set of powers that the president has in
00:19extreme circumstances. Think nuclear attack or Congress gets completely wiped out. And they're designed to help the president
00:25continue the functions of government until the country can get back on its feet.
00:29Now, these powers include suspending habeas corpus,
00:33deploying the military in certain parts of the U.S., restricting telecommunications, and other things. And they've been worked out by White House lawyers over decades, and
00:42they've drafted draft executive orders with blanks in them that can be filled out in extreme circumstances.
00:47And they are backed up by
00:50legal reasoning about
00:52the president's constitutional authority and what's in existing law. Why are former Trump administration officials concerned about this?
00:59I've talked to more than a dozen people who worked in the National Security Council over the decades and
01:04five of whom worked in National Security for President Trump.
01:08They actively tried to keep away information about the extent of these powers from the president when Trump was president.
01:14Why? Because they were concerned that he might exaggerate a situation or use them when they weren't appropriate.
01:20Another thing to know about this is that there are very few checks on them. If they're used, an American can go to a court
01:26and sue and say the president is overstepped, but that takes time.
01:30These are things that are designed to be used quickly and in extreme circumstances.
01:35And the other thing that I learned about this talking to former Trump administration
01:39officials is the number of times that Trump already showed in his first term that he wanted to stretch the limits of presidential power.
01:46He did things like move money from the military to build the border wall.
01:51He also used the presidency to try to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden
01:57by withholding funds from Ukraine. And he also pressured the Department of Justice to
02:04investigate Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, people he considered political enemies.
02:10The concern that these former Trump administration officials had was that when Trump comes back in the second term,
02:17he will be willing to push even farther and might turn to some of these extraordinary powers that are contained inside the presidency,
02:27but are designed to be used only when the country is in times of extreme crisis.
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