'Paranoia': Leaker reveals extreme tactic White House staff used to avoid Trump wiretaps

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference at a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025.

A leaker from President Donald Trump’s first administration has revealed that Trump’s obsession with wiretapping his staff’s devices made them so paranoid that they began taking extreme measures to protect themselves when holding secret meetings on “what to do.” This revelation follows reports released Wednesday that current Trump officials have been asked to surrender their phones for an investigation into recent White House leaks.

The latest disclosure comes via Miles Taylor, who served in the Department of National Security during Trump’s first term and at the time published an anonymous article that famously revealed the existence of a “resistance” movement within the administration. According to Taylor, it was October 2018, and “in the lead-up to that year’s midterm elections, there were quiet conversations among Trump’s Cabinet-level officials about resigning in protest. It’s quaint to think now, but back then, it felt like things were spiraling out of hand. The president was becoming unglued in public. He was barking illegal orders at his team in private. And in general, he seemed mentally unwell.”

With all this going on, the president “queried a White House staff member about the possibility of wiretapping his own appointees… He wanted to know if he was being critiqued behind his back and who was leaking bad stories about him…It didn’t take long before rattled advisers began quietly sharing the information with trusted confidants. Beware: the president wants to wiretap us.”

Because of this, writes Taylor, when “a group of Trump appointees, myself included, gathered at a cabin in rural Virginia to discuss what to do next,” each placed their phone in a Faraday bag before entering. As Taylor explains, a Faraday bag is “a pouch designed to block electronic signals from going in or out.” It’s a tool commonly used by those who seek to temporarily prevent their phones from being tracked, tapped, or otherwise monitored.

“We were worried about being watched,” explains Taylor. “For good reason. By that point, it wasn’t unusual for us to leave our phones behind in a motorcade or power them down before a sensitive conversation. In Washington D.C., paranoia is like a renewable resource — someone is always watching and listening. But this was different.”

“That’s why the Faraday bag came out at the cabin,” he elaborates. “Staff were concerned that even if we powered down our devices, they might still be compromised if Trump had found someone willing to break the law for him and spin up wiretaps. So we took no chances. We used the laws of physics to prevent any signal from getting in or out. Ironically, we were protecting ourselves against possible illegal surveillance by the president so that we could have candid conversations about how he was constantly trying to break the law.”

With this in mind, Taylor turns to CNN’s new reports that Trump had demanded White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and FBI Director Kash Patel launch an investigation into recent leaks, turning the West Wing into a “war room” in the process. “At least one federal agency reportedly warned its employees that if outside investigators came asking for information or devices, they should immediately contact their agency’s lawyers. According to these reports, not everyone complied with the demands to surrender their phones.”

“Even to me, the image is shocking,” writes Taylor. “The director of the FBI — the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency, an institution whose independence from the White House has been a bedrock norm since Watergate — set up shop steps from the Oval Office to personally run an investigation into the president’s own staff… at the president’s behest… because the president was embarrassed by press coverage of his airplane.”

“In 2018, we needed a Faraday bag to speak freely in a cabin in rural Virginia, but in 2026, federal employees evidently need lawyers on speed dial because the president’s henchmen might come for their phones at any minute.” According to Taylor, “It’s clear the paranoia inside Trumpworld hasn’t changed much. What’s obviously changed is that no one is waving the president off anymore. His personal fears have been permitted to become chilling acts of censorship.”

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