It all depends on how they want it to go down, which probably depends on what they think they could get away with. EMP might be a last resort.
I don’t know if we have enough federal troops in the country to take over the whole place. Martial law in just the major cities might not be enough to stop an election or to carry out a complete revolution.
If they wanted to do the complete revolution against an armed citizenry they’d have to use something like an EMP to cut off communications and get rid of the actual government in place at the time.
It depends on how quickly and how radically they want to do this, as opposed to a slower, sneakier approach.
In any event they’ve got lots of options, and we’ve got a hostage government taken over by a foreign enemy combatant who’s had 3 years to disable all the systems intended to protect us from him, so there’s nobody to protect us from ANY of these scenarios.
If you orchestrate race riots, people will cheer as the police are moved in to quell the riots.
When police can't do it alone, people will demand the governors send in national guard troops and cheer when they are sent in.
When the national guard troops come under attack from IED’s and it's learned the IED’s are the work of foreign terrorist working with the rioters, people will demand the Federal govt. take control of the situation and use the full power of thew military to stop the violence.
People will cheer as the military comes in to stop the violence.
This way they have a cover.
They didn't WANT to declare martial law, the people DEMANDED martial law be declared.
If their scam were to go south with them, yea I can see them stepping it up to an EMP.