A former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who wrote under the pseudonym “Anonymous” claimed that the Trump administration’s deployment of troops to U.S. cities is a “false flag” operation meant to provide a rationale for ”harsh crackdowns.” 

“I co-wrote Trump’s first anti-terrorism plan in 2017-18. He’s not trying to stop ‘left-wing’ terrorism. He is staging it,” Miles Taylor, a vocal Trump critic who served as a deputy chief of staff at DHS during the president’s first term, said in a Tuesday morning post on social platform X. 

“His troop deployments are a false flag — meant to provoke a response in order to justify harsh crackdowns,” Taylor added.

“This is now very obvious.” 

In recent months, Trump has authorized the deployment of National Guard troops to multiple Democratic-led states, including California, Oregon and Illinois. Governors of those states have pushed back on the effort. The president has also greenlighted the deployment of National Guard members to Washington, D.C. 

On Sunday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from sending National Guard troops to Oregon. Chicago and Illinois sued on Monday to block the administration from deploying the National Guard to the Windy City. 

Trump floated on Monday that he was considering invoking the Insurrection Act to justify the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland, Ore.. The president called the situation in Portland an “insurrection.” 

“Portland is on fire. Portland’s been on fire for years,” Trump said. 

On Tuesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi declined to answer a question about if she had talks with Trump about legal justification for deploying National Guard troops to U.S. cities. 

“I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House,” she told Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Taylor wrote a New York Times op-ed and later a book under the pseudonym “Anonymous” about how some officials worked to thwart Trump’s impulses during his first term.