Top military adviser secretly assured China Trump would not attack to stay in office, book claims

Milley took steps outside the chain of command to prevent Trump from launching a nuclear weapon or taking military action after the Jan. 6 riot, according to a new book.

President Donald Trump's senior military adviser took secret precautions to prevent Trump from being able to launch a nuclear weapon or taking military action after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to a new book.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president's top military aide, feared that Trump could "go rogue" after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and worried that he could stoke military conflict to cling to power and derail the peaceful transfer of power, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa write in "Peril."

Milley "was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline" after the election and had become "manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies," they wrote in the new book, obtained by ABC News ahead of its Sept. 21 release.

On Jan. 8, two days after the assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters, Milley called his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, to assure him that the United States was "100 percent steady" and not on the brink of collapse or war despite the unrest in Washington, according to the book. He reportedly did not tell Trump about the call.