T he Army Navy Country Club is a high-class place. The members-only club is located in Arlington, Virginia, five miles from the heart of the nation’s capital. The club bills itself as an exclusive “backyard” to the District of Columbia’s political and military “elite,” boasting a number of former presidents, congressional leaders and military brass among its legacy roster. Its 500 rambling acres of Virginia greenery offer a scene of antebellum pretense, filled with champi- onship golf courses and innumerable tennis courts. There, within sight of the Washington Monument, D.C.’s creme de la creme can luxuriate and unwind in card rooms and at “roof top socials,” or gorge themselves at banquets and brunches. Or, they can plot ways to deploy the military on U.S. soil, where troops could be used against Americans. In May 2024, according to documents obtained by Cochise Regional News and Phoenix New Times, the Army Navy Country Club was the backdrop of just such a scheme. As Donald Trump was escalating his campaign to regain the White House, a cadre of figures from Trump’s orbit gathered at the club for a brunch meeting focused on military aspects of Project 2025. Among their ranks were law enforcement personnel and former military and civilian officials from the first Trump administration. Several would go on to work under Trump a second time. This brunch was the first attended by the Border Security Workgroup, a little- examined division of the larger Project 2025 effort to plot a course for a second Trump presidency. CRN and New Times first reported the workgroup’s existence last year. This workgroup was ostensibly created to generate plans for the imple- mentation of Trump’s promised mass deportations and other national security objectives. But as the brunch’s keynote speaker made clear that day, its mandate was broader and more alarming. A round, balding man in his mid-50s, the speaker urged the assembled Trump loyalists, right-wing activists and policy- makers to examine workarounds for one of the key protections of the American demo- cratic experiment: the Posse Comitatus Act, which since 1878 has prohibited the use of the military to police Americans on American soil. They’d justify circum- venting the law by claiming to secure the nation’s borders amid what Trump and MAGA types portrayed as an invasion of illegal immigrants, terrorists and “transna- tional criminal organizations.” Their effort was not confined to the border. To this group, the border extended to all 50 states. Become experts on the Insurrection Act, the speaker counseled. That federal law — which Trump has repeatedly threat- ened to invoke since retaking office — is the primary exception to Posse Comitatus. It allows the president to seize control of state National Guard units and dispatch both the National Guard and active military forces to American states and cities to quell domestic “insurrections.” According to notes kept by one attendee, the speaker counseled the assembled Project 2025 crowd that the president is both commander in chief of the armed forces and the country’s chief law enforcement official. He said these powers should be “unified for border security.” Provisions of the Insurrection Act held the key to merging those two roles together, in order to “operationalize the capacities of the President’s national powers,” the speaker said. Despite the topic, the speaker was neither an expert on border security nor on military law. It was Jeffrey Bossert Clark, a former (and future) Trump official who’d already become infamous for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. An environmental lawyer in the Department of Justice during the first Trump presidency, Clark gained notoriety for enthusiastically working to advance Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 elec- tion. As a result of that effort, Clark was among the Trump sycophants indicted in Georgia’s Fulton County, along with Trump himself. At the time Clark spoke at the Project 2025 brunch at the Army Navy Country Club in May 2024, that indict- ment was still active, though it has since been dropped. Clark was most likely out of his depth. Yet he’d found the right audience for his expansive theories on Trump’s executive power. These were people with extensive ties to Trump, military professionals supportive of Trump, and the white nationalist and Christian nationalist substrate that undergirded Project 2025. And as is apparent in much of their work product over the next year — which CRN and New Times have acquired — they likely took Clark’s suggestions to heart. Over the next several months, the Project 2025 Border Security Workgroup dreamed up a new fusion-center-style law enforcement model that would blend federal, state and local authorities with the military, nationwide. This new structure would theoretically be used to ferret out illegal immigrants and protect Americans against the invading hordes. Documents show the group also contemplated using it for much more. Clark’s remarks to the Border Security Workgroup that day might be written off as crackpot theories from someone known to be several degrees less than reli- able on the subject of what presidents can and cannot do. But his words should be taken seriously. Welcome to the Insurrectionist Brunch On the Menu: A Trumpist plot to deploy the military on American soil. BY BEAU HODAI >> p 9 In May 2024, a coterie of Trumpists gathered at a fancy country club for brunch, and to plot ways to justify deploying the military on U.S. soil. (Illustration by Richard Huante)
