Miles Taylor: a same-day order, a private citizen's livelihood as the target

Clearance suspended by a separate memo signed the same day; review of his government activities by DHS ordered; no charges filed as of the write-up date

A separate memo signed the same day, April 9, 2025, as the one that targeted Chris Krebs (WLE-04) named Miles Taylor, the former DHS chief of staff who anonymously authored a 2018 New York Times op-ed and later a book critical of the first Trump administration, suspending his security clearance and directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to review his activities as a government employee.

Unlike Krebs or the officials targeted elsewhere in this bucket, Taylor by 2025 held no government position and had no ongoing official conduct that could plausibly be under review; the memo's stated basis traces to his political writing years earlier. Since the memo his family has been threatened and harassed, former colleagues lost government jobs because of their connection with him, and he has had to step away from work.

The joint Krebs/Taylor memo is a compact illustration of the mechanism at its narrowest: using a presidential directive to a subordinate agency, against private citizens, over years-old political speech, with the explicit and acknowledged effect of professional and personal harm rather than any pending governmental conduct.

Documented

No indictment on record; no court challenge to the memo identified

2025-04-09