On Thursday, Miles Taylor, a whistleblower from President Donald Trump’s first administration, described what he called a pattern of Russian collusion spanning both of Trump’s terms. Taylor, who served as the deputy chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security and leaked White House secrets, said Trump’s actions involving Ukraine amount to “treason” worthy of impeachment. He later revealed himself as the anonymous author of the 2018 New York Times op-ed “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” and of the book “A Warning.”

Taylor’s comments followed a week of controversy surrounding Trump’s policies toward Russia and Ukraine. The events began Tuesday, when Russian ballistic missiles struck Ukraine without the warnings that would ordinarily be provided through U.S. satellite systems, killing and injuring dozens of Ukrainians. American officials attributed the failure to “bad weather,” while Ukrainian officials said someone in the United States was “playing” with the system.

The following day, Starshield—the military version of Elon Musk’s Starlink, which Ukrainian troops use to fly drones and intercept Russian attacks—was suddenly throttled without warning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed anger and warned that “people will die.” Musk then attributed the decision to the White House, writing, “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS.” The White House has not denied his claim.

“Are we to believe this was a coincidence?” Taylor asked. “Missile warnings and battlefield communications all coming down at the same time? Was it all ‘the weather’? Not even a fool would accept that conclusion. Look at last week, and you can surmise exactly what happened. And it may well be criminal.”

Taylor said that, days earlier, Trump had held a “suspicious” phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump subsequently announced a deal to purchase millions of tons of Russian diesel, which Taylor said would violate sanctions that Trump himself had signed into law only weeks earlier. Republican senators also warned that Trump had broken the law by providing a financial gift to a U.S. adversary.

On the same day, Trump’s envoys told Ukraine that Washington would cut off intelligence support if Kyiv did not stop striking Russian oil refineries. Then, on Saturday, after Russian glide bombs killed 20 people in Ukraine, Trump made a statement Putin “has been dreaming of,” declaring, “It’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.” Late Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel responded to reports that he was planning to visit Moscow to meet with the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB, by writing, “From Russia, with Love…”

“There are very serious questions here, with very serious implications for the Trump presidency,” Taylor wrote. “What did the president know, and when? What did Putin ask of Trump in that phone call? Did Donald Trump agree to give Putin a financial boost and buy his oil? Did Putin suggest it might help Trump in the midterms by lowering gas prices? Did Trump offer to weaken Ukraine’s defenses for Putin? Did Trump then personally order the Pentagon to restrict Ukraine’s satellite communications while Ukrainian cities were under attack? Did he order American agencies to sit on intelligence about incoming strikes? What, exactly, did the two men say to each other on Friday?”

Taylor noted that Trump was previously impeached in 2019 over a similar issue: withholding military support for Ukraine to extract a political benefit for himself during what he described as a “perfect phone call” with the Ukrainian leader. At the time, Trump froze foreign aid intended for Ukraine to pressure the country into assisting his reelection campaign. Taylor said Trump was doing so again, but argued that the current situation was “more serious.” Impeachment requires only a simple majority in the House, while conviction and removal from office demand a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Trump was impeached twice during his first term—over Ukraine in 2019 and over the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack—and the Senate acquitted him both times.

“After a very suspicious phone call with Vladimir Putin,” Taylor wrote, “Trump may have shut down early warning systems and battlefield communications—by literally switching them off while civilians slept in their apartments in Ukraine, in the crosshairs of Russia—in order to pressure Ukraine into a bogus ‘energy ceasefire’ in order to herald lower gas prices before the U.S. midterm elections.”

Taylor acknowledged that the situation does not precisely fit the constitutional definition of treason. Under Article III of the Constitution, treason consists only in levying war against the United States or in adhering to its enemies by giving them aid and comfort. In his view, however, “a president who puts his allies in mortal danger with favors to an enemy and for personal benefit has essentially done what treason describes.” He added that impeachment does not require a criminal statute, arguing that the constitutional phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” was written to allow Congress to impeach a president for abuses of the public trust.

“There’s no clearer abuse than a commander in chief using American intelligence as leverage against the people it was built to protect, on behalf of the dictator trying to kill them,” Taylor wrote. Trump has previously been impeached over such actions, he said.

“The question our country must confront is whether the leader of the United States lowered the shield so that Putin could carry out murder and so that he could secure some political wins,” Taylor wrote. “In 2017, it took a special counsel to find out what Trump and Russia were doing together. In 2026, it might get blown open over an alleged lie about a weather report. The collusion is real.”

His reference was to the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 to examine Russian interference in the 2016 election and any links or coordination between the Russian government and people associated with the Trump campaign. Whether Congress pursues formal oversight of the episodes Taylor describes—and whether the White House offers its own account of the satellite and Starshield disruptions—will help determine whether his accusations move from public argument into formal inquiry.

Source: Alternet