How a bogus 'treason' probe became the blueprint for Trump DOJ: ex-DHS official

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro speaks, with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 27, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

In 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a federal investigation of a conservative who served in his first administration: former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chief of Staff Miles Taylor. Taylor discusses Trump's actions against him in an article for the UK-based i Paper, emphasizing that the president's executive order became a blueprint for his efforts to use the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against political foes.

Trump accused Taylor of "treason" — a claim that many legal experts and constitutional scholars attacked as ludicrous. Taylor was still serving in the first Trump Administration when, on September 5, 2018, the New York Times published his anonymous op-ed, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." Trump was furious when Taylor later came out as the op-ed's author.

"A year ago," Taylor explains in the i Paper, "Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to investigate me for 'treason.' It was the first time in 250 years of American history that a president had signed such an order to open a specific inquiry into a specific critic. The crime? I quit his first administration and exposed the misconduct I witnessed. And I haven't shut up about it since. He came back into office determined to make an example. But it didn’t stop there."

Taylor continues, "As I later found out, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi used Trump's order against me as the flimsy justification to strip away longstanding protections for reporters."

Taylor argues that the "treason" probe of him has broad implications for U.S. democracy and free speech in general.

"Of course, the Trump Administration has made it sound like this is about stopping leaks of classified information," Taylor writes. "Unfortunately for Trump, criticism of a president is not 'classified,' no matter how badly he wants it to be. Trump's logic is obvious. He doesn't want dissent amplified, and certainly not the most damaging kind — from insiders who have seen his impulsiveness and corruption up close."

The former DHS official continues, "So, they're using mob-like tactics to scare news outlets and the sources who they rely on to expose what's really happening around the president…. Last year, the president's aides told Rolling Stone he was coming after me to 'send a message.' He certainly has, though it's gone far beyond me. He's out to make an example of people everywhere who say what he doesn't want them to say. If the U.S. president wants to conflate free speech with 'treason,' then we should proudly wear the label of traitors."

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