• Pompeo was worried Trump would try to go to war to stay in power after losing in 2020, a book says.

• But in public, Pompeo made overtures to back Trump's baseless election-fraud claims.

• Another forthcoming book also says the US's top general warned against a conflict with Iran.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed concerns to at least one person that President Donald Trump would enter into a foreign conflict to try and stay in office after losing the 2020 election, according to the Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's new book, "Frankly We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost."

Both "Frankly We Did Win This Election" and other forthcoming books on the Trump presidency describe similar fears among military leaders and national security officials that Trump may use threats of war or domestic unrest to seek emergency powers in an attempt to subvert the election he lost.

Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the election, alienating another advisor, David Urban, who told the president's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner that it was "a d--- move" that made Trump "look out of control," Bender's book says.

The book also says both Pompeo and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feared that the new officials brought into the Defense Department and White House were conspiracy theorists and could even have "links to neo-Nazi groups."

Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists close to the former president, including former national security advisor Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, were floating the idea that Trump could declare martial law to somehow overturn the results of the 2020 election or order a new one. This would not be possible, as martial law does not suspend the Constitution.

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Pompeo told at least one other State Department official that "the crazies have taken over" the White House, Bender writes. The book adds that he pushed to speak daily with Milley and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about "hot spots overseas" to try and prevent the US from escalating conflicts in the wake of the November election.

But Pompeo struck a different tone in public.

On November 10, three days after all major news outlets and TV networks had called the 2020 election for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Pompeo said during a press conference at the State Department that "we're going to count all the votes" and promised "a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."

An excerpt of an upcoming book by The New Yorker's Susan Glasser and The New York Times' Peter Baker says that Trump advisors floated more military action in Iran after the election, with Milley repeatedly saying: "If you do this, you're gonna have a f---ing war."

Milley and other top US generals were also afraid that Trump could take his desire to overturn the 2020 election to the point of leading a coup, according to an excerpt of the book "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year" by the Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, which was published by CNN. Some top officials even prepared to resign en masse if necessary, the authors write.

Trump issued a lengthy statement last week, saying that he "isn't into coups" and that even if he were, he wouldn't make such a move with Milley, whom he described as having "no courage or skill."

Another recently published excerpt of "I Alone Can Fix It" says Milley likened Trump to Adolf Hitler. According to the book, he described Trump's refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election and his efforts to subvert it as "the gospel of the Führer."

Read the original article on Business Insider