Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor — who in October 2020 revealed he was "Anonymous," the unnamed senior official behind the 2018 New York Times op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" — has offered a satirical point-by-point rebuttal to the "grifter" label that President Donald Trump and his movement have used against critics, laying out in a post on his Substack how his outspokenness cost him his livelihood, his security, and friendships he valued most.

Taylor recalled a recent conversation with a reporter who accused him of "getting paid big bucks to stand up to Trump." He said that for a long time such a charge would have hit a nerve, because Trump frequently used this line of attack against his critics.

"The word Trump uses, and the word his whole movement adopted with the reflexivity of pull-string dolls, is 'grifter,'" Taylor wrote.

To answer the accusation, he joked about his "wealth-building secrets." The first step, he said, was getting fired; the second was filling out welfare benefits. "All the best con men are on unemployment while they make their big bet," Taylor wrote.

"Step three, and this is where the scheme really accelerates: give away the majority of proceeds from your book, hundreds of thousands of dollars, at the very moment you're struggling to figure out how to pay your own bills," he said.

Taylor also refused a financial advance for that book, A Warning, the New York Times reported. That Times story identified Taylor as "Anonymous," the unnamed author of both the op-ed and the book, which was published in 2019 without a named writer.

His next step, he said, was to blow whatever money he had left on security guards and lawyers to protect his family. "Every penny you drop on concealed weapons and lawyers will eventually make you richer. Trust me," Taylor said, tongue-in-cheek.

Another big money maker, he suggested, was to "get placed under federal investigation by a vengeful president, then sit at the kitchen table with your wife and price out what it would mean to sell your house to cover what's coming. Also, consider getting even more lawyers." The sarcasm there has a factual anchor: in April 2025, Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Justice Department to review whether Taylor and former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs' conduct around the 2020 election warranted civil or criminal action, and revoking their security clearances.

The final step, he said, is to fight back — "and then hold your wife as she cries after the startup you built together, and the friendships that have mattered most to you, crumble before your eyes."

Taylor has since formed a different good-government group, DEFIANCE.org, which aims to help people mobilize around presidential overreach. It is not his first such venture: he previously helped launch the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform, a group of former Trump administration officials, in 2020. He noted that despite his television appearances, he is not making money off the thousands of views his interviews receive.

While being sarcastic about his "wealth," he promised he is "doing just fine," but said that if his goal had been to make money, taking "the road not taken" would not have been the way to do it.

"Before Trump returned to office, I was on the path to building a multimillion-dollar business. Keeping my mouth shut was the lucrative option. It always was. The real profits in American life these days are earned by sitting comfortably on the sidelines. Yet it comes at a terrible price, which — at this point in my life, with what's happening in our country — I decided was not a price worth paying," Taylor explained.

He described one realization that came after meeting a close friend at a conference, when the friend explained he would have to distance himself from Taylor amid the new Trump administration. "Was I just trying to get attention?" the friend asked.

"Then, he explained in hand-wringing detail that he would need to step back from our friendship, lest he and his own business interests get caught in the crossfire. Ah, I thought, now I understand what's happening here. He laid out the logic of disassociation," Taylor wrote, saying his friend claimed he had to put on his own oxygen mask first.

Taylor closed by confessing that it took him a long time to let go of his anger about being called a "grifter" while his family was struggling. After the encounter with his friend, Taylor said, what he felt was "pity."