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Miles Taylor, Former Homeland Security Official, Reveals He Wrote Anonymous Anti-Trump Op-Ed

Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security, revealed that he was the anonymous author of an anti-Trump New York Times op-ed in 2018.

Taylor revealed his identity as the previously unnamed author in a blog post on Wednesday, saying “Donald Trump is a man without character. It’s why I wrote ‘A Warning’…and it’s why me & my colleagues have spoken out against him (in our own names) for months. It’s time for everyone to step out of the shadow.”

In his 2018 essay, Taylor wrote that President Donald Trump was “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective,” causing the president to tweet “TREASON?” and White House officials to wonder the author’s true identity. Taylor also anonymously wrote the scathing 2019 expose “A Warning,” bashing Trump’s decision-making and questioning the loyalty of his advisors.

In June 2019, Taylor resigned from the Department of Homeland Security and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

“Much has been made of the fact that these writings were published anonymously. The decision wasn’t easy, I wrestled with it, and I understand why some people consider it questionable to levy such serious charges against a sitting President under the cover of anonymity. But my reasoning was straightforward, and I stand by it,” Taylor wrote on Wednesday.

In August, Trump referred to Taylor as a “disgruntled employee named Miles Taylor, who I do not know (never heard of him)” in a tweet after Taylor publicly criticized him.

“Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling,” Taylor wrote on Wednesday. “I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves. At the time I asked, ‘What will he do when there is no person to attack, only an idea?’ We got the answer. He became unhinged. And the ideas stood on their own two feet.”

In his anonymous op-ed, Taylor said of Trump, “Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”

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