Donald Trump Tweets Letter From Lawyer John Dowd Slamming Gen. James Mattis, and Many Are Puzzled

Daniel S. Levine

06/05/2020 12:51 am EDT

President Donald Trump tweeted a letter written by John Dowd, one of the attorneys who represented the president during the Russia investigation, to retired Gen. Jim Mattis. The letter came after Mattis, Trump's first Secretary of Defense, wrote a scathing statement publicly criticizing Trump's response to the protests of George Floyd's death. In his statement, Dowd called peaceful protesters "terrorists" and suggested the protesters who were forcibly removed from Lafayette Square Monday evening were "not real." Trump's tweet with the letter shocked and puzzled Twitter users.

Dowd said the protesters outside the White House on Monday were "phony," "not peaceful" and "not real," without listing any evidence to prove this. "They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy. They were abusing and disrespecting the police when the police were preparing the area for the 1900 curfew," Dowd wrote.

On Monday, federal police used gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters just outside the White House. Trump then gave a speech from the White House, in which he vowed to take "swift and decisive" action to protect Washington, D.C., and called on states to deploy more National Guard troops. Afterward, Trump walked to St. John's Episcopal Church, which was damaged during protests on Sunday, to hold up a Bible in front of cameras, then walked back.

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In response to this event, Mattis sent a statement to The Atlantic, during which he described Trump as a threat to the Constitution. "When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution," Mattis wrote. "Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."

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Trump snapped back on Wednesday, claiming he "had the honor of firing" Mattis. Then, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump's second Chief of Staff, told the Washington Post that Trump did not fire Mattis, but Mattis resigned. Trump disputed this as well, claiming that Kelly "didn't know" he was going to fire Mattis. Trump said Kelly was not in his "inner-circle" and was "totally exhausted by the job" of Chief of Staff.

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The protesters outside the White House were demonstrating against police brutality following the death of Floyd, who died on May 25 while in police custody. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes, killing him. Chauvin was fired and has been charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers were fired and are also facing charges related to Floyd's death.

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