The identity of an anonymous “senior Trump administration official” who has authored a new book that offers a disturbing, behind-the-scenes portrait of Donald Trump has not yet been revealed. The book portrays Trump as, in the words of a Washington Post report, “cruel, inept and a danger to the nation.”
The media and the administration has sought the person’s identity since publication of a New York Times op-ed in September, 2018.
That NYT essay also gave a picture of Trump as irrational, unfocused, and incompetent at his job. But in the earlier piece, “Anonymous” says that Trump’s dangerously erratic behavior was restrained by “adults in the room” within his administration.
In the new book to be published November 19 and titled A Warning , the anonymous author has abandoned those comforting assurances, saying that Trump is impossible to control.
But who could this anonymous “official” be? When the NYT op-ed was published, former FBI agent Josh Campbell said that his investigative training pointed him toward one person: Kirstjen Nielsen.
Nielsen, 47, served as secretary of homeland security from December, 2017, to April of this year. She was the administration official responsible for carrying out Trump’s widely condemned policy of separating immigrant children from their parents when they attempted to cross the southern border.
Campbell in April said that similarities in the writing style between Nielsen’s resignation letter and the New York Times “anonymous” op-ed led him to conclude that Nielsen was “Anonymous.”
“As a trained investigator, I’m just going to go on record now saying that anonymous NYT op-ed was LOADED with commas and em dashes,” Campbell said, as quoted by Mediaite . “And so is this resignation letter.”
With the release of excerpts from A Warning , said to be penned by the same anonymous author, Campbell said on Thursday, via Twitter , “nothing has changed my old prediction.”
Campbell also said that he had compared the excerpts published by The Washington Post with Nielsen’s speeches. He found a similar frequency of sentences starting with the words “it is.” Both Nielsen and the anonymous Trump administration official also frequently use the phrases “those who would,” and “all I can tell you.”
When the New York Times op-ed was published 14 months ago, however, Nielsen denied that she was the essay’s author.
The book, according to the Washington Post excerpts, “paints a chilling portrait” of Trump that reminds the author of “a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower,” who pushes buttons at random, not caring whether planes skid off the runway, oblivious to the chaos he causes.
The Trump administration has attempted to suppress the book. The Justice Department sent letters earlier this week to the publisher of A Warning , as well as to the anonymous author’s agents, claiming that the author has violated a non-disclosure agreement.