A former Department of Homeland Security official, Miles Taylor, alleges mishandling of classified information regarding the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by former President Donald Trump while talking to reporters, according to a report.
NBC News, which obtained a copy of the ex-Trump staffer’s new book, detailed several excerpts regarding Trump from Taylor’s new book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, expected to be released mid-July.
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According to NBC, Taylor details an instance from Oct. 18, 2018, in his book. He describes the events of a private meeting in the White House with John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019.
Taylor writes that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was serving as Trump’s press secretary at the time, entered Bolton’s office and talked about an interview conducted in the Oval Office that Trump had done.
Trump allegedly talked to reporters regarding Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was murdered in 2018 by agents of the Saudi government in Turkey. Sanders told Bolton that Trump “picked up classified documents relating to intelligence on Khashoggi’s death and displayed them,” NBC reported, as detailed in Blowback. It was noted that reporters were unlikely to be able to read the writings.
“We were all disturbed by the lapse in protocol and poor protection of classified information,” Taylor writes.
NBC reported that Taylor’s book outlines Trump’s desire to tap the phones of White House aides in an attempt to avoid leaks to the press.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer reportedly ramped up measures to prevent press leaks by conducting random phone checks of White House staffers, Politico wrote in 2017.
In his 2018 book, The Briefing, Spicer said leaks were present in Trump’s administration, writing staffers would bring “burner phones” to work in hopes of avoiding being caught in a leak.
Reports circulated about the efforts from Trump’s team seeking to reduce the number of leaks from the executive level, with Politico writing that former White House chief of staff John Kelly approved a plan to remove some mid-level and junior staffers on the communications team in 2018.
Taylor has long sounded the alarm on the former president’s reelection efforts, warning of the effects if a similar candidate took office.
“If we elect another hyper-populist president, the shield will be turned into a political weapon,” Taylor wrote in Vanity Fair last week.
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Trump currently faces federal charges for retaining classified information found at his Florida estate after leaving the White House. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 charges brought by the Department of Justice and remains the GOP front-runner in the 2024 presidential race.
Taylor revealed to CNN in 2020 that he was the author behind an anonymous op-ed in 2018 in the New York Times, vowing to preserve democratic institutions while Trump poses a threat while in office, and he published a book in November 2019 titled A Warning, criticizing Trump.
