Who Is Miles Taylor? What to Know About the Former Trump Official

Former Department of Homeland Security chief Miles Taylor has taken credit for the anonymous New [...]

By Michael Hein

Former Department of Homeland Security chief Miles Taylor has taken credit for the anonymous New York Times op-ed about a secret "resistance" within the Trump administration published in 2018, and now many Americans are looking to learn more about him. Taylor's op-ed, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," was explosive at the time, and now he is offering more details in an interview with CNN on Wednesday night. Taylor is now calling on the American people themselves to serve as a "check" on President Donald Trump's "whims."

Taylor made a blog post on Wednesday, saying that he was the op-ed author that infuriated Trump and sparked a massive internal investigation back in 2018. Taylor has already publicly endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and he was featured in a video made by Republican Voters Against Trump back in August. It's also worth noting that he is not the first Trump administration official to speak out against the president, though the secrecy of his op-ed does set him apart.

Taylor was in charge of the Department of Homeland Security at a time when it was enacting Trump's controversial family separation policy for new immigrants at the southern border. According to the latest report by The New York Times, parents for at least 545 of these children still have not been found, prompting some to question what kind of "resistance" Taylor was really involved in.

In Taylor's new blog post, he wrote that he was "wrong" to try to give the American people hope of resistance from within the White House two years ago. He wrote: "The country cannot rely on well-intentioned, unelected bureaucrats around the President to steer him toward what's right. He has purged most of them anyway. Nor can they rely on Congress to deliver us from Trump's wayward whims."

"The people themselves are the ultimate check on the nation's chief executive," Taylor wrote.

Taylor was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, originally serving as the chief of staff for the secretary of homeland security herself, Kirstjen Nielson. Before that, Taylor had worked for the administration of President George W. Bush. Taylor resigned in November of 2019, and in August of 2020, he told CNN that he had resigned over Trump's handling of illegal immigration.

Taylor claimed that he had personally seen Trump offering federal pardons to Homeland Security staff for any criminal prosecution they might incur over their treatment of illegal immigrants. However, he still defended Trump's Muslim travel ban, his family separation policy, and other measures that led to children's inhumane treatment at the southern border today. For more of Taylor's story, tune in to his interview on CNN on Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET.

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