Trump supporters plotting second ‘insurrection’ before Biden’s inauguration, says Scaramucci

Former staffer says president ‘has to be taken away from the White House’ and warns of further attacks

Donald Trump’s supporters are planning another “insurrection” on the Capitol, a former White House staffer has claimed.

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, said on Monday that the US president's supporters were planning “another insurrection”, and called on vice president Mike Pence to remove him before it happens.

“There’s another insurrection coming. They’re signaling 17 January and possibly 20 January,” Mr Scaramucci said on Good Morning Britain. “It’s impossible to say how deranged they’ll become.”

The warning comes as Washington DC prepares to inaugurate president-elect Biden on 20 January, exactly two weeks after the US president’s supporters stormed the country’s legislature to protest the Democrat’s election win.

The president told supporters they should show “strength” as they marched on Congress, in comments that were said to have incited Wednesday’s attack – which was also allegedly planned online.

Mr Scaramucci said that recent social media bans on the president and Parler, an alternative chat app used by alt-right, were connected to concerns around the planning or inciting of a second “insurrection”.

“We have to act very very quickly in the face of facism. Whether it was Europe in the 1930s or the United States right now,” said Mr Scaramuci.

“He has to be taken away from the White House, and so if Mike Pence isn’t going to do it, then I don’t know why, because they were going to hang Mike Pence,” the ex-White House staffer added, in an apparent reference to a gallows that was carried to the pro-Trump rally on Wednesday, amid other weapons and props.

In response to Wednesday’s “insurrection”, campaigners and lawmakers have warned that an attack could be repeated.

"It did not succeed this time, but the danger from even a failed coup is to be taken seriously, setting the stage for them to come back sooner or later to re-seize power – with or without Trump," the leftwing protest organisation Refuse Fascism said in a statement this week.

On Saturday, Washington DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser said last week’s assault was an “unprecedented terrorist attack”, as ahe called for further security for Mr Biden’s inauguration.

Mr Trump is set to face a second impeachment trial, after Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Mr Pence that he had 24 hours to remove the president before Congress would attempt to do so. 

This article was updated on January 13, 2021, to replace the word ‘guillotine’ with the word ‘gallows’