Miles Taylor

Former Chief of Staff, Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration

This is much bigger than me. This is about whether we will allow the President—any president, of any political party—to criminalize criticism. —Miles Taylor

Miles Taylor worked in the first Trump administration as Chief of Staff in the Department of Homeland Security. In 2018, he wrote an anonymous Op-Ed in the New York Times that claimed a “quiet resistance” was afoot at the highest levels of the first Trump administration. Taylor asserted that Trump was amoral, with no principles, had a leadership style that was “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective,” exhibited “erratic behavior,” and made reckless decisions. He described a situation where people like him were trying to hold the government steady despite the president’s behavior.

“To be clear, ours is not the popular `resistance’ of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic,” wrote Anonymous.

The Op-Ed was a bombshell, causing pundits to play guessing games about who within Trump’s circle might secretly oppose him, while Trump went ballistic, vowing to expose the author and take revenge when he did. A year later, Anonymous released the book A Warning (Twelve Books, 2019), which expanded on his Op Ed. He also resigned from the DHS in June 2019, after serving as a top aide to Kirstjen Nielsen, the former DHS secretary fired by Trump months before Taylor resigned. He began working for Google as head of national security relations.

In 2020, Taylor went public as the famous Anonymous six days before the election. While he admitted to wrestling with the initial decision to choose anonymity, he said, “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. I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves.” He also claimed than his Op-Ed was not a minority opinion in the administration, suggesting a great opposition existed within Trump’s administration.

Now that Trump has returned to office, retribution has been swift. On April 9, Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum, “Addressing Risks Associated with an Egregious Leaker and Disseminator of Falsehoods,” in which he ordered that Taylor be investigated and revoked his security clearances, along with those of anyone associated with him. Trump accused Taylor of “sow[ing] chaos and distrust in Government,” and defined his actions as “treasonous.” For his part, Taylor has received support from Whistleblower Aid, via its new legal defense fund, End Presidential Revenge.

Taylor sees Trump’s attacks as a strategy to make people hesitate before they criticize the president: “Because someone might be at a university that I once taught at, they’ll potentially have their clearance revoked, which would upend their lives. That’s insane, and it has nothing to do with protecting the country. It has everything to do with sending a chilling effect on free speech.”

Taylor earned his BA From Indiana University and an MPhil in International Relations as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford. He said that he went into government after 9/11 because he "wanted to focus my entire professional life on making sure a day like that wouldn't happen again, and dedicating my career to what I thought was the mission of this country, and that's the advancement of human freedom." He served as an appointee in the George W. Bush administration before joining Trump’s first administration. 

Taylor resigned after calling Trump’s family separation policy at the border "one of the most disheartening and disgusting things I've ever experienced in public service." After A Warning, he published another book about Trumpism and how to thwart it: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump (Atria Books, 2023). In 2020, he also became one of the first former Trump officials to endorse Biden, and worked as a news commentator for several news organizations after Biden’s election.

Launching a new US political party

In June 2021, Taylor and Evan McMullin launched a new organization, the Renew America Movement (RAM), with a goal of  recruiting candidates in the 2022 election to challenge candidates who continued to support Trump. RAM then merged with other groups to form a new political party in the US, the Forward Party.

Trump’s response to Taylor indicates the severity of the president’s attack on the norms of government: the Department of Justice is supposed to be independent and make its own decisions, but now the president is using the agency as a personal weapon to punish anyone who disagrees with him.

As Taylor put it, “This is the scalpel they’ll use to ruin the lives of individuals the president is opposed to… It could be anyone… someone who gets in the way of the motorcade by accident, a cab driver who says the wrong thing to a Trump official. There’s literally no limit to where the president could take this. That’s really, really scary.”

Miles Taylor’s courageous decision to end his anonymity and take responsibility for his statements – and now make public Trump’s reactions – encourages others to speak up before it is too late. The presidency is too important an office to be used for petty personal revenge; Trump’s actions chill free speech for all of us, so Taylor’s fight affects us all.