Miles Taylor photographed in 2020 in Washington, DC. Credit – Bill O’Leary—The Washington Post via Getty Images
A former Homeland Security official whom President Donald Trump accused of potentially “treasonous” conduct is challenging the President’s use of federal power to investigate him, filing an Inspectors General complaint on Tuesday over what he calls an “unconstitutional order that targets a citizen not for a crime but for dissent.”
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, is urging federal watchdogs at the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to investigate whether their departments are being weaponized to punish dissent through Trump’s April 9 memo, in which he ordered an investigation into Taylor.
“The real harm will come if Trump’s lieutenants are allowed to carry forward with these revenge investigations, unimpeded,” Taylor wrote in an op-ed for TIME published Tuesday. “Indeed, it will create a precedent for this White House or any future president to investigate anyone they please.”
Taylor penned a widely read anonymous 2018 New York Times opinion essay titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” which set off a leak investigation at the White House. Soon after, Taylor left the Administration and published an anonymous 2019 book that chronicled his observations during Trump’s first term in office. He later revealed his authorship and publicly campaigned against Trump’s reelection.
Taylor’s complaint filed this week zeroes in on presidential memorandums Trump signed in April, which singled out Taylor and another official from Trump’s first term—former cybersecurity official Chris Krebs—who publicly contradicted Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud after the 2020 election. Both Taylor and Krebs had their security clearances stripped.
The memos marked a significant escalation in Trump’s post-reelection efforts to use the power of his office to punish perceived enemies. Trump suggested that Taylor may have violated the Espionage Act and committed treason, a crime punishable by death. “I think he’s guilty of treason,” Trump said in the Oval Office when he signed the memo.
Asked by TIME in April whether his memos calling for investigations into his critics were an appropriate use of presidential power—and whether they contradicted his own claims that former President Joe Biden had weaponized the government against him—Trump deflected: “Oftentimes I’ll have some people sitting right here, and behind them will be 10 or 15 people from their agency or their office, and they’ll stand there, and then all of a sudden, I’ll hear that like I’m, you know, they’re all time experts in me,” Trump said. “I know very little about Chris Krebs, but I think he was very deficient.”
Taylor noted in his op-ed for TIME that Trump is following through on his earlier vows to punish him for speaking out. “This is much bigger than me. This is about whether we will allow the President—any president, of any political party—to criminalize criticism,” Taylor wrote. “That’s why this Inspector General complaint matters.”
Inspectors General are independent watchdogs embedded within federal departments, responsible for uncovering waste, fraud, abuse, and violations of law. By filing a complaint with the oversight bodies tasked with policing misconduct within the government, Taylor is seeking to trigger a formal investigation into whether federal agencies are being co-opted to serve the President’s personal political agenda.
Though Inspectors General lack enforcement power, their findings can lead to internal discipline, referrals to the Justice Department, or congressional scrutiny. Trump fired more than a dozen Inspectors General less than a week into his second term.
Taylor’s complaint asks the Inspectors General at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to determine whether Trump’s memo is being used to initiate a politically motivated investigation into him in retaliation for public dissent. “Now is the time for them to act,” he wrote, adding that “DHS and DOJ watchdogs have a responsibility to investigate whether their departments are being misused to punish dissent, whether federal employees are violating constitutional rights, and whether this abuse of power is the beginning of something much worse.”
Taylor and his legal team have argued that Trump’s memo is “unconstitutional” and warned that the President’s directive amounted to “an unprecedented” use of the executive branch to target a private citizen for exercising free speech.
Taylor wrote that Trump’s memo has upended his personal and professional life—forcing him to step away from his job because “the blacklisting makes it impossible for me to carry out my work,” and exposing his family to harassment and doxxing by Trump supporters. A top Homeland Security official was even fired, he said, for attending his wedding.
“We are in a moment that will test democracy for the ages,” Taylor wrote.
Write to Nik Popli at nik.popli@time.com.
