WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump ordered extraordinary Justice Department investigations on Wednesday into two members of his previous administration, including one he alleged may have committed “treason.”
Trump also stripped the former officials — Miles Taylor, who worked in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — of their security clearances.
Taylor, while serving in DHS during Trump’s first term, penned an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times in 2018 under the pseudonym “Anonymous” that excoriated Trump and caused a sensation at the time.
“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality,“ Taylor said, accusing the president of making “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions.”
Taylor went on to reveal his identity after leaving the first Trump administration and wrote another book titled “A Warning.”
White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf accused Taylor during an Oval Office signing ceremony on Wednesday of leaking classified information while at DHS and making “outrageous claims both about (the Trump) administration and about others in it.”
The presidential memorandum signed by Trump targeting Taylor is “going to order the Department of Justice to investigate his activities to see what else might come up in that context,“ Scharf said.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, accused Taylor of saying “all sorts of lies, bad things.”
“I think it’s like a traitor, it’s like spying,“ he said. “We’re going to find out whether or not somebody is allowed to do that.
“I think it’s a very important case and I think he’s guilty of treason if you want to know the truth,“ Trump said. “But we’ll find out.”
Taylor, for his part, reacted to the news on X, writing: “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path.”
‘Big price to pay’
Krebs was fired by Trump in November 2020 after he issued a report saying there was no credible evidence of fraud in the election won by Democrat Joe Biden and it was the “most secure in American history.”
Scharf told Trump the presidential memorandum on Krebs “instructs your Department of Justice, other aspects of your government, to investigate some of the malign acts that he participated in.”
“This guy, Krebs, was saying, ‘Oh, the election was great. It was great,‘” Trump said.
“Well, it’s been proven that it was not only not great,“ he said. “It was a very corrupt election.
“So we’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election, and if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay, and he’s a bad guy.”
Since taking office in January, Trump has targeted a number of former officials he views as his political enemies, stripping them of their government security clearances or their personal security details.
This is believed to be the first time, however, that he has directed the nominally independent Justice Department to open investigations into his political opponents — an exceptional move by a US president.
Trump, the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, has also moved to settle scores with several large law firms that represented his political foes in the past or helped bring him to court on civil or criminal charges.
