A former Department of Homeland Security official who served under President Donald Trump has made explosive allegations against a prominent CNN commentator, claiming the pundit privately mocks the president despite defending him on air.
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for DHS during Trump’s first administration, sparked the controversy on social media Tuesday after a heated clash with Scott Jennings on CNN’s “NewsNight” the previous evening. Taylor wrote on X that Jennings is “a pundit who mocks Trump with us during commercial breaks — but fawns over Trump when the camera is rolling.”
The allegation sparked a social media uproar. New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan defended Jennings, saying he is a man of conviction and that his political beliefs are entirely genuine. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) disagreed, replying: “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING??!! I’ve been on CNN too and while I won’t reveal behind the scenes details, I’ll just say I disagree.” Jennings has not publicly responded to Taylor’s allegation.
The feud comes as Taylor faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration. In April 2025, the president signed a memorandum titled “Addressing Risks Associated with an Egregious Leaker and Disseminator of Falsehoods” that specifically targeted Taylor and ordered multiple government agencies to investigate his previous service. Trump publicly called Taylor “guilty of treason.”
Taylor’s accusations against Jennings add a new dimension to ongoing debates about media coverage of the Trump administration. Jennings, who served in the George W. Bush administration before becoming a CNN contributor, has become one of cable news’s most visible defenders of Trump’s policies. He previously appeared alongside Trump at a rally in Warren, Michigan, in April 2025.
Notably, Jennings himself once criticized Trump harshly. In a CNN op-ed on January 6, 2021, he wrote that “President Donald Trump caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election process being rigged against him.”
The former DHS official has grown increasingly critical of the agency he once helped lead. In a January interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, Taylor revealed he now believes DHS should be completely dismantled—a dramatic shift from his earlier views. He said Trump has “fully hijacked the department to act as his pocket police.”
Taylor explained that he only recently came to this conclusion after years of discussions with his wife, who also previously worked for the department. Senior White House advisor Stephen Miller, Taylor argued, “knows that agency inside and out” and understands “it lacks oversight.”
Taylor left the Trump administration in 2019. In September 2018, while still serving as deputy chief of staff to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, he authored an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times describing himself as part of a secret “resistance” to counter Trump’s “misguided impulses.” He subsequently published an anonymous book titled “A Warning” in 2019, followed by a second book under his own name, “Blowback,” in 2023, which warned about Trump’s potential return to office. Upon leaving DHS, Taylor received the Distinguished Service Medal.
The Trump administration’s investigation into Taylor has created what his attorney, veteran Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, describes as a “textbook definition of political retribution.” In a letter to federal inspectors general dated June 3, 2025, Lowell argued that the memorandum “flagrantly targets Mr. Taylor for one reason alone: He dared to speak out to criticize the President.”
Taylor maintains he committed no crimes. He described the situation as setting a dangerous precedent where “the president of the United States can now sign an order investigating any private citizen he wants, any critic, any foe, anyone.”
The investigation has devastated Taylor’s personal life. His legal team has documented threats and harassment, and former colleagues have lost government jobs due to their connections with him. Taylor told the Associated Press there’s been an “implosion in our lives.” He started a fund to pay legal fees, stepped away from work, and his wife went back to work to help pay the family’s bills.
Trump signed a similar investigation order targeting Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, on the same April day. Trump fired Krebs in November 2020 after Krebs disputed the president’s claims of voting fraud in the 2020 election and called it “the most secure in American history.”
Taylor’s broader criticism of DHS centers on what he sees as the agency’s vulnerability to abuse. The department, established in 2002 following the September 11 attacks, has undergone significant transformation under Trump’s second administration.
Other former DHS officials have expressed similar concerns. Jeh Johnson, who served as the fourth U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017, spoke at a Harvard Kennedy School forum in February following the shootings of two American protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis by federal agents.
Johnson said that when he watched the videos of Renee Good’s and Alex Pretti’s killings, he no longer recognized ICE and CBP; he blamed leadership for setting the tone and described an angry, poorly trained, undisciplined force that seemed to have come for a fight.
Even with the personal and professional risks, Taylor said he will not stay silent. He said the alternative would be to cower and give in, signaling that there are no consequences for this president and his administration when they abuse their powers.