President Donald Trump today ratcheted up his efforts to go after his critics, telling the Justice Department to investigate well-respected cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA, as well as a whistleblower, “Anonymous” author Miles Taylor.

“I think he’s guilty of treason if you want to know the truth, but we’ll find out … terrible guy,” Trump said after signing the presidential memoranda in the Oval Office to launch the DOJ investigations. Taylor had once worked under the George W. Bush administration as a senior aide on Capitol Hill before joining Homeland Security after Trump’s first victory in 2016. He eventually became the chief of staff to the agency Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

In 2018, he penned an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Anonymous.” The author claimed, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” to which Trump responded with the word, “TREASON?” Again under Anonymous, he wrote a scathing indictment of Trump in the book, “A Warning.”

“I said this would happen,” Taylor wrote today on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

A very similar order was signed relating to Krebs. Trump fired Krebs from CISA in 2020 after he had defied Trump by saying the election Trump had said was fraudulent was “the most secure in American history.” At the time, Trump wrote on X, then Twitter, “The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud.”

During the signing of the memoranda today, Trump doubled down, alleging that Krebs had “weaponized his position against free speech in the election context.” He added, “This guy is a wise guy. This is the most secure election in the history of our country! No this was a disaster.”

Krebs’ current position is chief intelligence and public policy officer at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne Inc. Today’s order removes “any active security clearance held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including SentinelOne, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

Krebs has yet to make a public statement.

Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr