Trump wanted to tap aides’ phones to stem leaks, former official says

Former President Trump wanted to wiretap his aides’ phones in order to pursue potential leakers, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aide alleged in an upcoming book, reviewed by NBC.

Miles Taylor, a senior aide to former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, also claimed that aides had concerns about the way the former president handled classified materials.

Trump has long decried those who leak information to the press as “traitors.” He’s also called for criminal charges against those who leaked information out of his administration.

Taylor recounts in his book an instance when then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders warned the former national security adviser John Bolton that Trump had shown classified information about Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder to a reporter in an interview.

He alleged Bolton “breathed a sigh of relief” when told there were no cameras in the room to capture the documents.

“We were all disturbed by the lapse in protocol and poor protection of classified information,” Taylor writes.

Bolton however told NBC he does not recall the exchange.

Taylor is a known critic of Trump, and he penned an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times criticizing Trump’s character in 2018.

“I witnessed Trump’s inability to do his job over the course of two-and-a-half years. Everyone saw it, though most were hesitant to speak up for fear of reprisals,” he wrote.

A spokesman for Trump denounced the upcoming book, calling Taylor a “lying sack of s–t.”

“His book either belongs in the discount bin of the fiction section or should be repurposed as toilet paper,” spokesman Steven Cheung said.

The remarks come as Trump is facing a criminal indictment for his handling of classified documents after he left the White House. He was charged with 37 counts in relation to the mishandling of records at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as well as his efforts to block the government from recovering the documents.