Trump’s Team Refutes Author’s Claims About Tapping Phones, Say New Book Should Be Used as “Toilet Paper”

According to allegations made by a former Donald Trump administration official, former president Trump wanted to "tap the phones" of White House aides who he thought were leaking information.

The former president allegedly suggested the notion "to pursue leakers by tapping phones" at some time in 2018 according to Miles Taylor, who oversaw the Department of Homeland Security under Trump. He made this assertion in his most recent book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy.

John Kelly, who was then the White House chief of staff, immediately shot down the plan and cautioned Trump that he would be breaching the law. Mr. Taylor claims in the book excerpt, which Axios was able to obtain, that Mr. Kelly "quickly nixed the suggestion, knowing it would be illegal."

Since then, Trump's team has refuted the assertion and attacked Mr. Taylor for writing a book that contains several alarming assertions about the former president's tenure. Steven Cheung, the head of communications for the Trump campaign, retaliated in a statement to Axios, stating, "Miles Taylor is a loser and a lying sack of s---. His book either belongs in the discount bin of the fiction section or should be repurposed as toilet paper."

Without providing any proof, Trump once claimed that his predecessor, former president Barack Obama, had tapped his own phone before the 2016 election. In 2017, Trump shocked everyone by claiming that Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Obama vehemently refuted the charge, and Trump eventually backtracked, explaining that he meant surveillance in a broader sense, per Independent.

According to Mr. Kelly, Mr. Trump "questioned whether investigations by the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agencies" could be launched into Mr. Peter Strzok, who along with another FBI colleague had been shown to have disparaged Trump in private text messages, in a deposition taken as part of a lawsuit from ex-FBI agent Strzok.

Taylor initially gained fame in 2018, when he published an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times titled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." In his latest book, he also claimed that Trump was sexist towards his own daughter. Taylor claims that Kelly once had to "remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter" due to his offensive remarks.

Trump was recently found guilty of sexual assault by a New York jury and ordered to pay E Jean Carroll $5 million, per Guardian. After the jury convicted Trump responsible for sexually assaulting and defaming the former Elle journalist, numerous former staff members came forward last month and spoke up about Trump's habit of acting inappropriately with women while in office. Although Trump has denied any misconduct and is contesting the Carroll ruling, reports Newsweek.