A leaker from President Donald Trump's first administration said Thursday that more whistleblowers are weighing whether to come forward and expose what he describes as "illegal activity" raging inside the White House.

Miles Taylor, who served as Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security and became widely known for leaking administration secrets, said additional disclosures are imminent. In a note published on Substack, he offered direct guidance to insiders considering going public about the president's conduct.

"I'm addressing this note to the 'would-be' whistleblowers inside the second Trump administration who are thinking about coming forward," Taylor wrote. "I know how many of you are out there. You work at DHS, the Justice Department, or the Pentagon. Maybe you left this past year after being pushed out or fired, carrying a banker's box of trinkets from your desk and a pit in your stomach about what you'd witnessed. You've said nothing because the price of speaking out has never felt higher. You don't want to be attacked or to risk your financial future or even, perhaps, to foreclose the possibility of going back into government."

Hard data supports that apprehension, Taylor noted. In 2024, a survey found that roughly three-fourths of federal employees said they could report illegal actions without fear of reprisal. After Trump had been back in office for a year, that figure had fallen to just 22.5 percent. The slide matters because employee complaints are the raw material of oversight: when workers hold back, fewer allegations reach the agencies and congressional committees positioned to investigate them.

"In other words," Taylor warned, "the intimidation from the White House is working."

Taylor speaks from personal experience. In 2018, he authored an anonymous New York Times opinion piece exposing misconduct within the Trump administration. As the 2020 election approached, he came forward under his own name to detail further allegations, including Trump's quid pro quo pardons, a stated desire to shoot migrants at the border, and conduct that he said nearly dragged the United States into a nuclear war.

"Coming forward cost me almost everything," Taylor wrote, describing how the Trump administration sought to discredit and exact revenge upon him. Drawing on that experience, he outlined several things he wishes he had done differently.

"Many of my disclosures never reached the investigative stage, despite in some cases being graver than the disclosures that led to Trump's first impeachment," he wrote. "To this day, I wish I'd teamed up with a whistleblower organization to package each disclosure as a discrete, formal complaint for the relevant agencies and congressional committees. Believe it or not, formal complaints are harder to ignore than bombshell headlines. They land on the desks of investigators with the right jurisdiction… they create a paper trail… and they tend to become real investigations — which then become media firestorms anyway."

With that in mind, Taylor urged prospective whistleblowers to connect with organizations such as Whistleblower Aid and the Government Accountability Project. Both groups are staffed by former government employees and past whistleblowers who provide free, expert assistance in preparing disclosures lawfully and confidentially, and will "sherpa" a leaker through the entire process.

Taylor added that government employees who wish to report illegal activity can also do so through the Democratic Staff of the House Oversight Committee tip line or the Senate Democrats' whistleblower portal. He advised anyone taking that route to use a personal device rather than a government one and to consult a lawyer.

"I won't pretend it's a cakewalk," Taylor admitted. "The emotional and professional toll can be great, but I promise it's not greater than the toll of sitting on evidence of wrongdoing. I've watched for years what silence has cost my former colleagues. It's corroded their consciences, their character, and their careers. I know all too well that witnesses to this administration's corruption have been berated, threatened, and silenced. But their harassment of you has gone on long enough. Now it's your turn to stand up, and this time you won't be standing alone."

For readers tracking what comes next, the markers are concrete: new formal complaints filed with the agencies or committees Taylor named, and any public response from the official channels he flagged. Those would be the first signs of whether the wave he describes takes shape.