‘Anonymous’ whistleblower Miles Taylor changing locations, employing private security after death threats

Miles Taylor, the former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staffer who authored the “Anonymous” New York Times op-ed, revealed in a new profile that he shuffles between undisclosed locations and has hired private security after receiving death threats.

Taylor told The Washington Post that he has moved between at least 10 different locations like private homes and hotels since revealing himself as the author of the controversial opinion piece in October.

His private security detail guards the entrance of the location where he is located that day.

“I’m so spooked,” Taylor told the Post during an interview at a secret location.

The precautions come after Taylor received a flood of criticism and death threats, according to the newspaper.

Critics on the right called him a “traitor,” the Post noted, while those on the left knocked him for working for two years in the Trump administration as the chief of staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, especially since he was reportedly involved in the agency’s family separation policy. He also faced backlash for not revealing his identity sooner.

Taylor during the interview recalled an instance in September where a drone hovered in the sky above him while he dined at an outdoor restaurant in Tucson, Ariz.

Taylor, who worked for DHS from 2017 to 2019, announced weeks before the presidential election that he had penned the op-ed, titled, “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.” It was published under an anonymous byline in the Times in 2018.

In the piece, Taylor described a chaotic White House and an unhinged commander in chief showing little regard for constitutional or political norms who posed a danger to the country and world. 

He later wrote a book under his “Anonymous” pseudonym called “A Warning” in November 2019.

His family was reportedly unaware of what he was doing when he holed up in his grandmother’s Florida condominium to write. Taylor told the Post that that the revelation of his identity came as a shock to his father. 

Since leaving DHS, Taylor has taken a job as a CNN contributor and has appeared in political advertisements for the group Republican Voters Against Trump.  

Taylor was asked directly by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in August if he had written the op-ed, which he denied.

“I’m not,” Taylor replied. “That was a parlor game that happened in Washington, D.C., of a lot of folks trying to think of who that might be. I’ve got my own thoughts about who that might be.”

“You’re not ‘Anonymous’?” Cooper pressed.

“I wear a mask for two things Anderson: Halloween and pandemics. So no,” Taylor stated.

“I wear a mask for two things, Anderson: Halloween and pandemics. So, no,” says @MilesTaylorUSA, when asked by @AndersonCooper if he is the author of the op-ed book written by someone called Anonymous. pic.twitter.com/sPjs4OoAnp

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) August 21, 2020

President Trump has called on the network to fire Taylor, but he has remained at CNN. The president also said Taylor should be “prosecuted.”

“It turned out to be a low-level staffer, a sleazebag, who has never worked in the White House,” Trump said at a rally in Goodyear, Ariz. “Anonymous was a nobody, a disgruntled employee who was quickly removed from his job a long time ago for, they tell me, incompetence.”