Former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor on Wednesday revealed himself as “Anonymous,” the author of an op-ed vowing resistance to President Trump.
Taylor — who previously denied he was “Anonymous” — triggered intense speculation about the identity of the disgruntled staffer in September 2018 when he wrote of “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Taylor, a paid CNN contributor since last month, was DHS chief of staff for less than a year and left the department in June 2019. He anonymously wrote the book, “A Warning,” last year.
Taylor’s LinkedIn profile says he’s on leave from Google, where he works as US Lead for Advanced Technology and Security Strategy.
White House Press Secretary Kayeligh McEnany dismissed Taylor as a “low-level” aide in a Wednesday afternoon statement.
“This low-level, disgruntled former staffer is a liar and a coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading,” McEnany said.
“He was ineffective and incompetent during his time as DHS Chief of Staff which is why he was promptly fired after only serving in this role for a matter of weeks. It is appalling a low-ranking official would be granted anonymity and it is clear the New York Times is doing the bidding of Never-Trumpers and Democrats.”
Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley, a White House staffer during the time Taylor worked at DHS, said. “This is the least impressive, lamest political ‘reveal’ of all time. I worked with DHS officials while I was in the White House, and even I had to research who Miles Taylor was.”
Washington gossip for years swirled about the person’s identity and many Trump officials denied they were Anonymous.
Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley publicly denied writing the initial op-ed in the New York Times.
Taylor tweeted Wednesday, “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.”
In a blog post, Taylor wrote, “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.”
In August, Taylor denied in a CNN interview that he was the author, after he cut an anti-Trump ad for the group Republican Voters Against Trump.
“I wear a mask for two things, Anderson: Halloween and pandemics. So, no,” Taylor told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A CNN source told The Post the network didn’t know Taylor’s secret when it hired him as an on-air contributor and a CNN spokesman told The Post he won’t be fired despite lying on air to Anderson Cooper.
Many Trump allies speculated that The Times granted anonymity to someone who wasn’t a household name and noted a “senior official” could be hundreds of people.
Taylor was not widely known in Washington during his less than one-year role as chief of staff to then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and then-acting secretary Chad Wolf.
The mystery created tensions inside the White House. “We’ve had over 20 people in this administration accused in print of being Anonymous. That’s a terrible pall that’s cast over the White House, it just makes you distrust everybody,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who spearheaded an effort to unmask the person, told CNN in a February interview.
After Taylor came forward, first lady Melania Trump’s deputy chief of staff Emma Doyle tweeted that “a lot of people” owe former National Security Council official Victoria Coates “a public apology for private slander” for accusing her.
The Anonymous op-ed was nearly 1,000 words and captivated political journalism for months. It objected to “the president’s amorality” and, specifically, to Trump calling media outlets the “enemy of the people.”
The op-ed said Trump “engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”
“Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” Taylor wrote as Anonymous.
The explosive op-ed was light on policy specifics, but faulted Trump’s “preference for autocrats and dictators” and his approach to Russia.
“He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better,” the op-ed said.