Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was the anonymous author of The New York Times Op-Ed article in 2018 whose description of President Trump as “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” roiled Washington and set off a hunt for his identity, Mr. Taylor confirmed Wednesday October 28 2020. Mr. Taylor resigned from the Department of Homeland Security in June 2019, and went public with his criticism of Mr. Trump this past summer. Mr. Taylor served for two years as a top aide to Kirstjen Nielsen, Mr. Trump’s third homeland security secretary. As chief of staff to a cabinet secretary, Mr. Taylor was one of the top political officials in the sprawling, 240,000-person department, with frequent access to Mr. Trump and other senior White House officials. Previously, he worked for two years for the House Homeland Security Committee, serving as an aide to Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, who was the chairman of the committee at the time. He left government after Ms. Nielsen was fired and later became the head of national security relations for Google. He has been on personal leave from the company for the past several months after endorsing Mr. Biden and has been organizing other Republicans to campaign against Mr. Trump’s re-election.