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WASHINGTON (AP) – Elizabeth Neumann struggled with the decision for weeks. She was concerned about the backlash, the impact it would have on her career, and possible threats to her family.
But the former Department of Homeland Security official, who had resigned in April, reached a breaking point after President Donald Trump deployed Homeland Security agents in Portland, exacerbating tensions there. He decided it was worth the risk of speaking out against Trump, whom he had come to see as a threat to the country.
“Enough is enough,” said Neumann, a former undersecretary for counter-terrorism and threat prevention. “People must understand how dangerous the moment we are in is.”
There are many others weighing the same decision.
With only a few weeks to go before the Nov.3 election, now is the moment of truth for current and former Trump administration officials debating whether they too should step up and join the chorus of Republican voices trying to persuade. to voters on the fence to help deny Trump a second term.
“It’s now or never,” said Miles Taylor, a former DHS chief of staff, who has been working to recruit others to join the effort. In interviews, Taylor has accused Trump of routinely asking his aides to break the law, using his old agency for explicitly political purposes and with the desire to maim and shoot migrants trying to cross the southern border.
“Those who witnessed the president’s inability for office up close have a moral obligation to share their assessment with the electorate,” said Taylor, who launched the REPAIR group, the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform, to bring together former concerned officials.
A related group, Republican Voters Against Trump, has compiled nearly 1,000 video testimonials from Republicans across the country who want Trump out. Chief Strategic Officer Sarah Longwell said her goal was to provide a “permit structure” to help hesitant Republicans feel comfortable opposing Trump.
The effort, he said, grew out of an investigation into Trump’s “soft” voters.
“While these voters disliked Trump a lot, they didn’t trust the media, they didn’t trust the Democrats, they didn’t trust the leaks,” he said. Who is a credible messenger? It was people like them. “
Other prominent “trainers” have spoken independently, or are considering it.
Former national security adviser John Bolton wrote a scathing book in which he said Trump “saw conspiracies behind the rocks and remained shockingly uninformed” about how to run the government. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis broke a self-imposed vote of silence in June with an opinion piece criticizing Trump’s response to the racial justice protests. He and former director of national intelligence Dan Coats were also quoted extensively in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward as calling Trump dangerous and unsuitable for the job.
But Mattis and Coats, like former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former national security adviser HR McMaster, have refrained from more explicit condemnations, often citing a “duty of silence” or a long tradition that officers military stay out of politics, according to the people who have spoken with them.
Efforts are underway to remove them. While former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen appears unwilling to step up, there is hope that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson can be persuaded to comment and that Coats will be urged to say more. And Kelly, a retired four-star general, is said to be undecided and torn by the decision.
“I think he loves his country and he wants to do what’s best for the country,” said Neumann, who served as Kelly’s deputy chief of staff at DHS and is hopeful to speak up, even when others don’t believe it. it will happen.
Officials like Kelly, with long careers and high pensions, would appear to have less to lose doing so than more junior employees like Olivia Troye, a former counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, who last week joined the campaign against Trump and said she ‘ I’d be voting for Biden.
In a video and interviews, Troye has accused Trump of mishandling the coronavirus and being more concerned about his reelection prospects than saving lives. The White House responded with an aggressive campaign of attack aimed at discrediting it through a barrage of statements, interviews and denunciations from the lectern of the White House briefing room.
“These are not profiles of courage, but they are profiles of cowardice,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said of Troye and Taylor, dismissing them as part of a “fringe club of, quote, ‘Never Trumpers. ‘who are desperate for relevance. “
Taylor said it was clear that the White House was “going after” those who speak out as a warning to others who are considering doing the same.
“The White House knows that if they show that this is something very expensive, they will scare people out of going forward,” he said.
He added that while more people are still considering running, the White House’s tactics have worked to some extent, dissuading a senior official who had been about to speak.
Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, stressed that time is running out.
“There will be a cottage industry when Trump is out of his office of people who say, ‘Oh, I fought from the inside, I fought the good fight, I kept so many bad things from happening,'” he said. never mind. There is only one moment in time that matters. And that’s now. “
For Neumann, who describes herself as a conservative Christian and voted for Trump in 2016, the considerations were deeply personal, including what it could mean for her career in a city that prioritizes loyalty.
“This is a city based on relationships,” he said. “And what we’ve done, you know, is generally not done in this city. You usually stab people in the back and do it silently. You do it as an anonymous source. You don’t actually put your name on it. “
Neumann is still out of work, pointing out that many companies fear hiring contracts that may appear political. But she said she was pleasantly surprised by the overall response.
“It was more positive than I expected,” he said, adding, “No serious threats, I haven’t had to call the police or anything, so that’s good.”
Anthony Scaramucci, who turned on the president last year after a brief stint as White House communications director, has also been in talks with those on the fence and is using every channel he can find to spread his message. , including a new anti-Trump documentary. .
“We have to keep up the pressure, so for me it is a multimedia approach. It’s radio, it’s podcasts, it’s Twitter, it’s television and it’s movies, “she said.” As a citizen, all I’ve tried to do is provide a warning from a surgeon general … This guy is a threat to the institutions of democracy, and I worked for him and I think it’s important to send a signal to other people ”, he said, it’s okay to talk.
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Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Nancy Benac contributed to this report.
