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Washington — A homeland security official who served during President Trump’s first term and who authored an anonymous op-ed criticizing him is speaking out after he was targeted by the president in an executive memo.
Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security and left the Trump administration in 2019, said learning of the memo was a “gut punch” that has taken a devastating toll.
“When you get named on a modern black list from the White House, it results in the systematic destruction of your life, professionally and personally,” Taylor told CBS News in an interview on Thursday.
In April, Mr. Trump signed the executive memo targeting Taylor, accusing him of manufacturing stories to sell a book and ordered DHS, the Justice Department and other government agencies to investigate him and revoke security clearances for him and anyone in close proximity to him. Mr. Trump also ordered an investigation into the dissemination of classified documents while Taylor worked for the government. Taylor denies he leaked any such material.
Taylor said that as a result of the executive order, he felt “completely radioactive” to his employer and family and friends, and he said he had to step away from his work in tech consulting because the executive order could result in the Trump administration investigating anyone employing him.
“There’s that first immediate piece, which is professional and financial. How are we going to survive?” Taylor said, adding that in the days following the order, Mr. Trump’s supporters have started threatening and doxxing him and his family.
“Keep in mind, treason is a crime punishable by death in the United States, and even if the president doesn’t take that seriously, and he says it as a figure of speech, his supporters do take it seriously, and so my wife and I have been on the receiving end of threats, not just against us, violent threats against us and to her, but also our baby daughter,” he said.
He also said it was difficult to find a legal team to defend him because of the Trump administration’s attacks on law firms that have represented Mr. Trump’s political adversaries.
“Now we’re lucky that we did (find a lawyer), but then the question becomes, will it bankrupt us? I mean, my wife asked me, right after this happened, ‘Will we have to sell the house,'” Taylor said, adding that a number of whistleblower protection groups have stepped up to support him.
Earlier this month, Taylor and his attorney sent a letter to inspectors general at the Justice Department and DHS calling on them to investigate Mr. Trump’s executive order and its implementation. Taylor called that letter a “test case” to see if “the guardrails of democracy will hold.”
Taylor said it’s unclear which arm of the government is investigating him, but claims that people he knows from high school have told him they’ve received calls from law enforcement asking to question them, and former DHS colleagues warned him that all the government emails he sent while he worked in the administration have been loaded into a government system for review.
“I would hope all Americans, regardless of political party, would say that’s a really scary thing — if we reverse the justice system to start with the conclusion, to start with the crime, and then work backwards and see if we can go find the evidence to support it,” Taylor said. “But that happened, and it wasn’t some two-bit investigator who did that. The president of the United States signed a piece of paper and said this in front of the nation, and that’s why we decided to fight back.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, in September 2018, Taylor penned an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times that spoke of a “quiet resistance” against him, and two years later, he disclosed he was the author.
“Like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” Taylor wrote in the opinion piece.
Taylor condemned Mr. Trump’s actions as “detrimental to the health of our republic” and said they were caused by his “amorality.” In particular, Taylor expressed alarm about the president’s “preference for autocrats and dictators.”
After the op-ed was published, Mr. Trump tweeted “TREASON?” and called for the author to be “prosecuted.”
Taylor also warned of the Trump administration’s dismantling of traditional reporting systems for government whistleblowers, warning of a “systematic effort underway to try to suppress any dissent.”
“Once upon a time, if you were a federal employee, there were a number of appropriate avenues through which you could go to blow the whistle,” Taylor said. “Now, those avenues are filled with IEDs.”
