Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who claimed to be a part of an internal government “resistance” through his work as “Anonymous,” said he went into hiding after receiving death threats.
Taylor, who was a Homeland Security official until last year, told the Washington Post in an interview published on Tuesday that he has moved between nearly a dozen places, including private homes and hotels, since publicly revealing his alter ego one month ago.
The report said Taylor demanded they leave out the details pertaining to where the interview took place because he’s afraid of being attacked. Taylor now has private security.
“I’m so spooked,” he said, according to the report. Taylor later told the Washington Examiner that the comment was in reference to a “creepy” drone that was “targeting” him at a dinner in October.
He also said that the threats are not ongoing.
Taylor, 33, was chief of staff to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He was also a counterterrorism adviser to then-White House chief of staff John Kelly. He worked at the DHS between 2017 and 2019, and he later endorsed now-President-elect Joe Biden in August.
Over the past two years, he has also been Anonymous, and under that guise, authored an op-ed in the New York Times in 2018, which the outlet said came from a senior administration official, and in 2019, Taylor authored a book, A Warning. In the months leading up to his big reveal, Taylor criticized President Trump publicly on his personal social media account and on CNN.
Trump, who called the author “gutless” and questioned whether a “so-called ‘Senior Administration Official'” from the op-ed even existed, pushed then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the source of the opinion piece at the time it was published.
The news that Taylor has received death threats fits a larger trend of ex-Trump administration officials who have crossed the president. That includes Chris Krebs, the former top U.S. election official who was fired this month after stating that the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history. Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova, a member of Trump’s legal team contesting the results of the 2020 election, said on Newsmax on Monday that Krebs deserved to be “shot.”
Philadelphia Commissioner Al Schmidt said in an interview last month that he and the other commissioners have received death threats during the turbulent election season.
“No one needs to worry about me,” Taylor told the Washington Examiner, adding that what should be of concern is “how many officials are being targeted for speaking up.”
Editor’s note: This article was updated after its initial publication with comment from Taylor to the Washington Examiner.
