Trump Fires Top Official Over Loose Ties to “Anonymous” Author
The White House fired an official because he knew the guy who criticized President Donald Trump in the famous “Anonymous” op-ed in
The New York Times seven years ago,
The Washington Post reported Friday.
The executive director of the Office of Trade Relations at Customs and Border Protection, George E. Bogden, was abruptly asked to leave his post over apparent ties to Miles Taylor, the author of the anonymous 2018
op-ed, sources told the
Post. Taylor was Trump’s chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security at the time, and the piece revealed he and his colleagues’ internal efforts to thwart parts of the president’s agenda. Taylor made his authorship public in 2020 after leaving his position as chief of staff.
The president has reportedly been obsessed with the op-ed ever since. Bogden was asked to step down from his role, despite his centrality to implementing the president’s
absurd tariff scheme. Bodgen’s job was to listen to the trade industry’s complaints and grievances amidst the economic chaos spurred by Trump in recent weeks.
It’s unclear what merited Bogden’s ousting, and there are few ties connecting the two men other than a Facebook photo of Bogden at Taylor’s wedding in 2019, one year before Taylor had revealed he wrote the op-ed. Sources told the Post that Bogden and Taylor “have not been close,” and that “few Trump allies, including Bogden, were aware of Taylor’s role in writing the piece at the time it was published or by the time of the wedding.”
Another source familiar with the story told
The New Republic that there was no evidence presented to Bogden other than the Facebook photo, making it seem more like collecting opposition research rather than an investigation.
newrepublic.com
