NSC Aide Is Out of White House After 'Anonymous' Rumors

Victoria Coates didn't write the book, agents said
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 20, 2020 5:00 PM CST
Adviser Rumored to Be 'Anonymous' Is Leaving White House
Rumors were circulating that Victoria Coates wrote this oped, under the byline "Anonymous" and a book purportedly telling the inside story of the Trump adminstration.   (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A national security aide who's been rumored to be the author of a tell-all book about President Trump's White House is being moved out of it. Victoria Coates will begin her new job as a senior adviser for the Department of Energy on Monday, Reuters reports. White House officials said the transfer had been on its way for weeks, and they dismissed the "Anonymous" rumors, as had agents for the book, per Politico. The author surfaced in 2018 with an op-ed piece in the New York Times critical of Trump's handling of his job. A book with similar content, A Warning, was published in November. Coates' boss, national security adviser Robert C. O'Brien, said a week ago in answer to the rumors that she was staying. "Victoria Coates is my deputy," O'Brien said, per CNN. "She's running our Middle East Bureau and she's here at the NSC." On Thursday, O'Brien said in a statement that Coates will be an asset at DOE.

Trump said this week that he knows who "Anonymous" is. “We know a lot," he told reporters, per the AP. The president has removed National Security Council and State Department staff members since he was acquitted of impeachment charges. In the book, the author writes that senior administration officials discussed resigning together in 2018 in objection to the way Trump conducts the presidency but decided not to. Coates, who has a doctorate in Italian Renaissance art, joined Trump's NSC staff early and was an opponent of the Iran nuclear agreement. (More National Security Council stories.)

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