This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

More than 300,000 people have pledged to attend “rapid response” protests across the US, should Donald Trump fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

The activist website MoveOn said it had more than 800 “emergency” rallies around the country prepared if Trump dismisses Mueller, who is investigating whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Activists would spring into action within hours, MoveOn said, marching in cities and towns in each of the 50 states. The mass protest would also be triggered if Trump moved to replace the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein – which could clear a path for Mueller to be fired – or if Trump pardoned key witnesses in the Russia investigation.

Trump’s latest tirade suggests he is moving closer to firing Mueller Read more

As Trump has stepped up his criticism of the special counsel in recent weeks, MoveOn said people had flooded to its website to sign up for rapid response rallies.

Since 17 March, when Trump publicly criticized Mueller for the first time, more than 100,000 have pledged to attend events. MoveOn launched the sign-up section of its website in August 2017, and is being supported by a slew of activist organizations including Indivisible and Women’s March.

“We’ve seen another explosion of interest in these events over the last few weeks, reflecting the heightened threat that Trump may actually move to end the investigations,” said David Sievers, campaign director at MoveOn.

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When Trump mused on Monday – after an FBI team had raided the offices of his longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen – that “many people” had told him he should fire Mueller, it sparked another surge of sign-ups. More than 20,000 people signed up in the two following days alone.

MoveOn set out how the emergency rallies would take place in a detailed plan on its website.

If Trump moved to fire Mueller before 2pm local time activists would spring into action at 5pm that same day. If the president dismissed Muller later than that protests would begin at midday the day after.

The president, in a rare show of discipline, had refrained from directly mentioning Mueller by name for months until his 17 March outburst.

“The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” Trump tweeted. The next day he accused “the Mueller team” of having “13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans”.

Since then he has repeatedly attacked Mueller, and on Tuesday White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said Trump had been advised that he could fire Mueller and “certainly believes he has the power to do so”.