A former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who criticized President Trump in his first term said in a new interview that he thinks he was right to be concerned that the president would seek “revenge” upon his return to office.
“My concern was he would turn the government into a revenge machine, and that’s what’s happening,” Miles Taylor, former deputy chief of staff at DHS during the first Trump administration, said in an interview with NBC News.
Last month, Trump signed a memorandum directing the Department of Justice to investigate Taylor, who wrote a New York Times op-ed and later a book under the pseudonym “Anonymous” about how some officials were working to thwart Trump’s impulses during his first term.
White House staff secretary Will Scharf said at the time that the memo would strip any active security clearance for Taylor and would direct the Justice Department “to investigate his activities to see what else might come up in that context given his egregious behavior during your previous administration.”
Taylor told NBC News he thinks he’s being targeted for exercising his First Amendment right to free expression.
“I know I’ve never broken the law. I know that I’ve assiduously upheld my national security obligations,” he said. “What’s really important for people to know is you don’t need a permission slip in the United States to criticize the president.”
Taylor said he knows of instances of government officials contacting former high school classmates and other associates, saying to NBC News, “I have seen indications that they are out there, rummaging through my past, talking to people as far back as high school and trying to comb through my life.”
He described how the memo has turned his life upside down, compelling his family to take additional security precautions and to cut back on his work.
He has said he has not considered trying to strike a settlement discretely with the administration, as some others have, stressing he has committed no crime.
“That is insidious; that is un-American. You can’t threaten Americans to not exercise their First Amendment rights because they’re fearful the president of the United States will prosecute them,” he told NBC News.
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