'Anonymous' Comes Out of the Shadows

Miles Taylor says he's the author of a book and op-ed about President Trump
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 28, 2020 4:19 PM CDT
'Anonymous' Comes Out of the Shadows
This March 27, 2018 photo shows then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and then-Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor meeting with officials in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.   (Tim Godbee/Department of Homeland Security via AP)

"Anonymous" has emerged. Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at Homeland Security, says he is the author of a scathing op-ed and a book about President Trump that roiled Washington over the past two years, the New York Times reports. "Much has been made of the fact that these writings were published anonymously," Taylor writes at Medium. "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." Taylor left Homeland Security in 2019 and publicly criticized Trump this summer, but always denied being "Anonymous." Now he supports Joe Biden.

"Make no mistake: I am a Republican, and I wanted this President to succeed," writes Taylor, who describes Trump as a man "without character" whose "personal defects have resulted in leadership failures so significant that they can be measured in lost American lives." But he admits to one mistake in his 2018 Times op-ed: He no longer believes that senior officials can frustrate Trump's agenda, CNN reports. "The country cannot rely on well-intentioned, unelected bureaucrats around the President to steer him toward what’s right," he writes. Back when Taylor was "Anonymous," Trump accused him of treason: "If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must ... turn him/her over to the government at once!" the president tweeted. (More Anonymous stories.)

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