Donald Trump may turn off the internet if elected to a second term in the White House, a former staffer has warned.

Miles Taylor, Trump’s former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was asked on MSNBC about what potential damage the former president, who is the frontrunner in the GOP primaries, could do in government without breaking the law.

“The possibilities are almost limitless,” Taylor said. “The biggest concerns for me are on the national security side. I think Americans still don’t understand the full extent of the president’s powers and things Donald Trump could do, bubble-wrapped in legalese, that would be damaging to the republic.”

“He could invoke powers we’ve never heard a President of the United States invoke — potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil,” he added. “We don’t know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren’t widely known to the American people.

“That’s a big worry for people like me and others who worry about what he could do. But that weaponization of the government could extend across the interagency to places where we haven’t seen it before — the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs — ways to wield that power and those budgets to help his allies and to hurt his enemies.”

Newsweek reached out to representatives of Donald Trump via email for comment.

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In a 2015 campaign rally, Trump suggested he was open to restricting the internet in certain cases.

“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said. “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”

In a Republican debate later that month, Trump said he was “open to closing areas” of the internet to prevent terrorism.

“ISIS is recruiting through the Internet. ISIS is using the internet better than we are using the Internet and it was our idea,” Trump said. “I want to get the brilliant people from Silicon Valley and other places and figure out a way that ISIS can’t do what they’re doing. I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet.”

When challenged, he added: “I’m not talking about closing the internet. I’m talking about closing parts of the internet where ISIS is.”

A provision in the Communications Act empowers the president to “cause the closing of any station for radio communications” (such as broadcasting or mobile phone networks) as well as “cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communications” (such as telephone and internet networks).

All that is necessary for the exercise of these huge powers is a “proclamation by the President” of “national emergency” in the case of broadcast stations and mobile phones or the “interest of the national security” for the internet or telephone networks.

Removing internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require multiple companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.

Source: Kate Plummer, newsweek.com/donald-trump-could-turn-off-internet-miles-taylor-1852774