When the demonstrators hit the streets around the White House in June 2020, Trump allegedly said: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper writes in his book “A Sacred Oath”, the report said.

Esper previously served as secretary of the army and was fired by Trump after the November 2020 election, which the incumbent president lost to current president Joe Biden.

The former defence secretary wrote that he then “had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid”, the report said.

Esper’s memoir was vetted at the highest levels of the defence department in the Biden administration before it was allowed to be published in its current form, the report said.

It was reviewed in whole or in part by nearly three dozen four-star generals, senior civilians, and some cabinet members, according to the report.