Trump strips security clearance from former DHS official Miles Taylor

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a memorandum stripping the security clearance for Miles Taylor, who served as Department of Homeland Security chief of staff under Trump's first term in office.

At the signing, an administration official told Trump before he signed the memorandum, "you may recall Miles Taylor served in the Department of Homeland Security during your previous administration. In his capacity with the Department of Homeland Security he leaked classified information, he wrote a book under the pseudonym 'Anonymous,' making outrageous claims both about your administration and about others."

Under the memorandum signed by Trump, Taylor is stripped of any active security clearances "in light of his past activities involving classified information," and orders the Department of Justice to investigate Taylor’s activities.

Trump said, "and I had no idea who this guy was. I had no idea. I saw him on CNN or one of them, I guess CNN, a lot, he’d be on all the time saying 'the president this, the president that.'"

"I barely remember him. It was somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies." Trump called Taylor's actions "like a traitor" and said that he thought Taylor was "guilty of treason."

In 2018, Taylor, who was then a senior official in the DHS, wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times titled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." He claimed that Trump "continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic," and the root of the problem was Trump’s "amorality."

In 2019, Taylor came out with his book "A Warning" under the name "Anonymous" and identified himself only as "A Senior Trump Administration Official." The New York Times stated in a review of the novel that it was " a warning, for those who need it, that electing Mr. Trump to a second term would be courting disaster. 'The president has failed to rise to the occasion in fulfilling his duties,' Anonymous intones."

In response to the order, Taylor wrote, "I said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point."