Leftists celebrities and activists are spreading a conspiracy theory from a Google engineer that President Trump is planning a secret coup against the United States, causing the topic to trend on Twitter Monday.

“The administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government,” claims Yonatan Zunger, a “Distinguished Engineer at Google, working on the Privacy team” according to his LinkedIn profile, in a blog post titled “Trial Balloon for a Coup?” published to Medium. “This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.”

“Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States,” he continued. “It gave them useful information.”

The article was shared by celebrities such as Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo, musician Questlove Gomez, House of Cards creator Beau Willimon, and #BlackLivesMatter activist Shaun King, legitimizing the conspiracy theory while gaining thousands of favorites and retweets.

“Eyes open and on the ball. Bannon hates our government,” claimed Mark Ruffalo in one tweet about White House Chief Strategist and former Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon.

“This may be a coup d’etat. The most valuable lesson I learned working in politics: always be prepared for the worst,” declared Beau Willimon. “I cannot stress enough how important it is to be thinking this way. It may be what saves us. Circulate.”

“Dem consultants are sharing this/going crazy. Apparently Trump is leading a secret coup d’état,” posted one former political consultant. “Lol. Please.”

Though the article was riddled with unfounded implications, it was shared thousands of times on social media, with its popularity fueled largely by the liberal elite celebrities that promoted it.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.