WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Trump administration official who penned a scathing anti-Trump op-ed and book under the pen name “Anonymous” made his identify public Wednesday.
Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security says in a tweet: “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 shadows.”
Taylor has been an outspoken critic of Trump's in recent months, and he has a contributor contract on CNN.
Taylor’s anonymous essay was published in 2018 by The New York Times, infuriating the president and setting off a frantic White House leak investigation to try to unmask the author.
In the essay, the person, who identified themselves only as a senior administration official, said they were part of a secret “resistance” force out to counter Trump’s “misguided impulses” and undermine parts of his agenda.
The author wrote, “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
The allegations incensed the president, bolstering his allegations about a “deep state” operating within his government and conspiring against him. And it set off a Beltway guessing game that seeped into the White House, with current and former staffers trading calls and texts, trying to figure out who could have written the piece.
Trump, who had long complained about leaks in the White House, also ordered aides to unmask the writer, citing “national security” concerns to justify a possible Justice Department investigation. And he issued an extraordinary demand that the newspaper reveal the author.
Instead, the author pressed forward, penning a follow-up book published last November called “A Warning” that continued to paint a disturbing picture of the president, describing him as volatile, incompetent and unfit to be commander in chief.
Trump “stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information,” the author alleged, also citing racist and misogynist statements the author claimed Trump made behind closed doors.
Then-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham slammed the author as a “coward” for hiding their identity, charging that they “didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies.”
