Miles Taylor, chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security under Kirstjen Nielsen, revealed Wednesday that he was the anonymous “senior” White House official who authored a critical op-ed of President Donald Trump.
The 2018 op-ed published by the New York Times described President Trump as “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” and said that he was just one of many officials in the administration working against the president.
Taylor revealed his identity to prominent media outlets on Wednesday afternoon, despite denying he was responsible for the op-ed in previous interviews.
Taylor was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security under Kirstjen Nielsen and resigned from the administration and took a job with Google before taking leave to publicly endorse former Vice President Joe Biden for president and campaign against Trump. He was also signed as a CNN contributor earlier this fall.
Taylor had very little access to the president, but the Times described him as a “senior” official at the time of the op-ed’s publishing.
The Times defended running the anonymous op-ed, noting that it “adds significant value to the public’s understanding of what is going on in the Trump administration from someone who is in a position to know.”
The op-ed fueled weeks of cable news speculation about the identity of the Trump official and raised concerns of the “deep state” working against the president.
Breitbart News first reported on Taylor’s opposition to the president’s agenda in May 2019.