President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Justice to investigate two former officials from his first administration, including one whom he accused of being “guilty of treason.”
Trump, in a memorandum signed in the Oval Office, ripped ex-Homeland Security official Miles Taylor for writings Taylor made under an “anonymous” pseudonym, which notably include a highly critical 2018 opinion piece in The New York Times where he described himself as part of the “resistance” to the president.
“His conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous and as possibly violating the Espionage Act,” read the memo, which stripped security clearances from Taylor and called on the DOJ to probe his work in the federal government.
Taylor later declared on X, formerly Twitter, that “dissent isn’t unlawful” and it “certainly isn’t treasonous.”
“America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point,” wrote Taylor, who served as chief of staff to Trump’s former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Taylor, whom Trump claimed he “barely” remembered on Wednesday, joins a list of those targeted on the president’s revenge tour against his political adversaries — some of whom have also been stripped of their security details.
A separate memo signed by Trump describes Chris Krebs — former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who was fired after he pushed back at the president’s bogus claims of 2020 election fraud — as a “significant bad-faith actor” and calls for a review into his governmental work, as well.
Trump, while signing the memo that revoked Krebs’ security clearance, referred to his former top cybersecurity official as a “wise guy” and a “disgrace” while doubling down on his false election claims.
Krebs reshared a post on X Wednesday that he had made in November 2020, “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow. #Protect2020.”
The order also suspends active security clearances for employees at the cybersecurity company SentinelOne, where Krebs now serves as the chief intelligence and public policy officer.
A spokesperson for SentinelOne told HuffPost that the company “will actively cooperate in any review of security clearances held by any of our personnel,” a number that’s currently less than 10 of its roughly 2,300 employees.
“Accordingly, we do not expect this to materially impact our business in any way,” read the statement, which stressed that the White House is a “crucial collaborator” in the company’s mission to “defend customers, enterprises, and governments against cyber threats.”
Tim Miller, an ex-spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and writer-at-large for the anti-Trump conservative site The Bulwark, referred to the president’s remarks on Krebs as “madness.”
“Chris Krebs was a public servant, a GOP appointee, who *did his job* ensuring the 2020 election was secure. For our government to target him like this is appalling & Stalinesque,” Miller wrote on X.
“Any person who reveres our constitutional republic should speak out against it.”