Former top-ranking Trump official endorses Biden, saying working under the current administration was 'terrifying'

• Miles Taylor, the former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff under President Donald Trump, on Monday announced he's endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden.
• Taylor painted a grim picture of life in the Trump administration in a video endorsement of Biden.
• "What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying," Taylor said.

A former senior official in the Trump administration endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president on Monday.

Miles Taylor, who served as the Department of Homeland Security's chief of staff, in a video endorsement of Biden said that working under the current administration was "terrifying."

"What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying. We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue — cyberattack, terrorism threat. He wasn't interested in those things. To him, they weren't priorities," Taylor says in the video, which was produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump.

Taylor said that many of the things President Donald Trump wanted DHS to do were impossible and in some cases illegal. He characterized the president as vindictive and self-centered.

"Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president. And even though I am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I'm confident that Joe Biden will protect the country, and I'm confident that he won't make the same mistakes as this president," Taylor, who was at DHS from 2017 to 2019, adds in the video.

—Republican Voters Against Trump (@RVAT2020) August 17, 2020

Taylor also wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he said Trump has tried to turn DHS into a "tool used for his political benefit."

"Trump's indiscipline was also a constant source of frustration ... The decision-making process was itself broken," Taylor wrote.

"It is more than a little ironic that Trump is campaigning for a second term as a law-and-order president. His first term has been dangerously chaotic. Four more years of this are unthinkable," he added.

The White House brushed off Taylor's endorsement of Biden.

"This individual is another creature of the DC Swamp who never understood the importance of the President's agenda or why the American people elected him and clearly just wants to cash-in," White House spokesperson Judd Deere said regarding Taylor, according to Forbes reporter Andrew Solender.

Anthony Scaramucci, whose tenure as Trump's communications director was extremely short-lived, has also endorsed Biden.

While other former senior administration officials have publicly condemned Trump in recent months, including former national security adviser John Bolton and former Defense Secretary James Mattis, they've stopped short of giving a full-throated endorsement of Biden. Bolton recently told Insider political correspondent Sonam Sheth that he would not vote for Trump or Biden.

"I'm not going to vote for Biden for philosophical reasons, and I'm not going to vote for Trump for philosophical reasons and because he's not competent," Bolton said. The former national security adviser told Sheth that he was considering write-in candidates but didn't point to anyone in particular.