President Donald Trump’s revenge tour isn’t over yet.
Shortly after hitting pause on his market-crashing tariffs Wednesday, Trump signed a fresh wave of executive orders targeting the next names on his long list of political enemies: Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs.
The orders stripped security clearances for both men, who were prominent antagonists within the administration during Trump’s first term, and ordered the Justice Department to investigate their “egregious behavior” and “malign acts.”
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Trump described the executive orders as “very important for the country.”
Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, penned the infamous “anonymous” column for The New York Times in 2018 that claimed there was a “quiet resistance” within the first Trump administration working against the president’s “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” leadership style.
“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality,” he wrote. “Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”
A year later, Taylor anonymously published A Warning, a book he described as “a character study” of Trump and “a caution to voters that it wasn’t as bad as it looked inside the Trump Administration — it was worse.”
He resigned the same year.
Taylor revealed himself as the anonymous writer in 2020 and endorsed Joe Biden for the presidency. Trump said at the time that he had “never even heard of” the official, who worked with his administration to put kids in cages during an immigration crackdown and ban travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.
“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 at the Oval Office on Wednesday. “But we’ll find out.”
Taylor said in an X post that he saw the move coming.
“Dissent isn’t unlawful,” he wrote. “It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
The president also took aim at Krebs, a former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who staunchly defended the integrity of the 2020 elections from Trump’s claims of fraud.
Trump fired Krebs in 2020 for debunking his false claims of a “rigged” election. CISA said at the time that the 2020 polls were “the most secure in American history”—a phrase that Trump apparently hasn’t forgotten as he mockingly repeated it in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
“This guy is a wise guy,” Trump said of Krebs. “He said, ‘We’ve proven this is the most secure election in the history of our country.’ Now, this was a disaster… He’s a fraud. He’s a disgrace.”
Krebs’ response to his firing in 2020 was brief: “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow. #Protect2020.”
The executive orders against Taylor and Krebs were the latest development in Trump’s crusade against his political enemies.
The president previously issued similar orders targeting law firms linked to investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot and to Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
