Associated Press
Side-by-side images of the cover of "A Warning" and President Donald Trump.
- The impending release of "A Warning," an exposé about the inner-workings of President Donald Trump's administration, has reignited discussion over which senior Trump official is the anonymous author behind it and the op-ed published in The New York Times in September 2018.
- Both pieces are written by the same anonymous "senior Trump administration official" who is critical of Trump's presidency and, as they wrote in their Times op-ed, "vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."
- After the 2018 op-ed was published, most of the main players in the Trump administration denied having written it. A few online sleuths compiled clues pointing toward different people in the White House.
- There are also elements in the Times op-ed and "A Warning" that hint at what type of person wrote it, along with soundbites from past and current White House figures.
- Here are the breadcrumbs left by the author and some of the people identified as possible matches.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The anonymous senior official in President Donald Trump's administration who first penned the explosive "resistance" op-ed for The New York Times has a new book-length exposé, "A Warning," coming out later this month. Still anonymous, the official's representation says they are still working at the White House, fueling speculation as to which member of Trump's team is spilling secrets and profiting off anti-Trump backlash.
Released excerpts from "A Warning" contain fiery anecdotes from inside the White House, suggesting that Trump's staffers are concerned about his mental capabilities and recalling what almost became a mass midnight resignation of the president's top officials.
After the initial anonymous op-ed ran in September 2018 attacking Trump's "amorality" and attesting that the writer and other top officials were working "to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations," all of the high-profile members of the Trump administration publicly denied writing it.
There are several clues that point toward the identity of the anonymous author behind "A Warning" and the Times op-ed, but they're all just guesses. Javelin, the literary agency that represents the author, told Business Insider that "We have heard numerous guesses as to the identity of the author of A WARNING - just yesterday it was Barack Obama. Our response is and will always be the same: no comment."