0:03

What bench were we sitting on?

0:05

Were we here or were we right over there?

0:07

Now I think we were on this spot.

0:09

I think we sat over here.

0:10

I think we sat over here. Let's let's

0:12

relive it. Let's see that

0:14

life has changed a hell of a

0:16

lot since we sat on this bench. We

0:19

grabbed coffees, we walked down that bridge,

0:21

and I'm pretty sure we sat down, and

0:25

you know, we were both nervous about being seen by anyone.

0:27

One of the more senior people

0:30

in the Trump administration who was still there,

0:33

comes walking up with

0:37

their puppy. I

0:39

remember my hands going cold and thinking,

0:42

oh my god, they're gonna think we're conspiring. They're gonna

0:45

think that I'm conspiring with Miles. I can just see it.

0:47

Now.

0:47

She's gonna go back and report this to the White House,

0:49

and the cat's out of the bag.

0:53

Olivia Troy and I first met

0:55

at the Department of Homeland Security when

0:57

we were both working on counter terrorism.

1:00

I became DHS chief of staff, and

1:02

she went on to become a top aide

1:05

to Vice President Mike Pence and eventually

1:07

the lead staffer on the White House's

1:10

Coronavirus Task Force. As

1:12

you can imagine, we both

1:14

experienced our fair share of crises.

1:18

In that first scene you heard Olivia

1:21

and I are reliving a stressful

1:23

moment for both of us. It

1:25

was in September twenty twenty. I

1:27

had quit the Trump administration the year prior

1:30

and was trying to get others to come forward

1:33

and talk about the mayhem inside the

1:35

Oval office. Olivia had

1:37

just quit her position, too, frustrated

1:39

by White House mismanagement of the pandemic,

1:43

so she wanted to talk at

1:45

least very discreetly. Unfortunately,

1:48

we were spotted by one of President

1:50

Trump's lawyers, who happened

1:52

to be walking a dog in the neighborhood.

1:55

We had an awkward conversation with her when

1:57

we pet her dog, and I think we all agree

2:00

we've got to get together for lunch sometime.

2:02

And you and I walked away, and you basically

2:05

said to me, Yeah, I gotta gouch.

2:09

If this run in makes Olivia uneasy,

2:11

it isn't just paranoia. By

2:13

that point, I've been on TV daily

2:16

speaking about the chaos that I'd witnessed during

2:18

the Trump presidency. Naturally,

2:20

I was getting attacked by the White House and

2:23

Trump's allies. Olivia being

2:25

seen with me would definitely make anyone

2:27

in the administration suspicious that

2:30

maybe she is planning to go public

2:32

with damaging information too, and

2:35

she is. I was scared.

2:37

My sense of purpose was leaning towards

2:40

that direction because I felt like if

2:42

I could make a difference, or if I could have a voice

2:44

in it that maybe might reach

2:47

somebody, then I needed to do it. But

2:49

then seeing how

2:51

you had been treated, seeing all

2:53

the threats that you had faced and what had

2:55

happened, was a pretty scary calculus,

2:58

knowing that that would probably

3:00

become my life.

3:05

Nine days later, Olivia speaks

3:08

out publicly and it does

3:11

become her life. I'm

3:13

Miles Taylor. This is the

3:15

whistleblowers on

3:18

this show. We're going deep into the heart of power

3:20

to meet people who spoke out about wrongdoing

3:23

from inside the Trump administration. Some

3:26

were in the President's inner circle, others

3:29

were on the front lines of top agencies.

3:32

But they all have a few things in common,

3:35

the ethical gray areas, the doubts

3:37

about whether what they did even made an impact,

3:40

and their decisions cost all of them

3:42

more than they ever imagined. Episode

3:48

five, Homeland Insecurity.

3:57

So let's go back to the period when

3:59

Olivia and I first met She

4:04

started work at DHS right around

4:06

the beginning of the Trump administration, and

4:08

I came in a few months later. Almost

4:11

from day one, she realized

4:13

this was not going to be like anything she'd ever

4:16

seen.

4:17

I remember that one of the first things issued

4:19

was what was called a travel band.

4:22

January twenty seventh, twenty seventeen,

4:25

the new president issues an executive order

4:28

banning travel from seven Muslim majority

4:30

countries. The announcement is all over

4:33

TV, with Vice President Mike

4:35

Pence and Secretary of Defense Jim

4:37

Mattison standing right behind Trump,

4:39

their faces unreadable.

4:42

I'm establishing new vetting measures

4:46

to keep radical Islamic terrorists

4:50

out of the United States of America.

4:53

We don't want them here. We want to ensure

4:55

that we are not admitting into our country

4:57

the very threats our soldiers are

5:00

fighting overseas.

5:02

It actually came as a part of a group

5:04

of executive orders, so we

5:06

were drowning because all of them

5:08

hit at once. It was immigration executive

5:10

orders, it was talks

5:13

about.

5:13

The border wall construction.

5:15

And I remember thinking, like, they're

5:17

flooding the system because at some point, like

5:19

the system breaks, because it is the same

5:22

people.

5:22

All of it really falls under DHS.

5:25

Olivia is specifically working in

5:27

the DHS Office of Intelligence

5:29

and Analysis, a unit that

5:32

in any other presidential administration

5:34

would be consulted about changes

5:37

to US counter tears and policy. But

5:39

she isn't consulted. No one

5:41

on our team is. In fact, before the order

5:43

is issued, no one in the entire Department

5:46

of Homeland Security sees it, even

5:48

though it's allegedly focused on combating

5:51

terrorism. Olivia realizes

5:53

this is the new normal. The experts

5:56

are kept in the dark.

5:58

And I remember we were in a meeting after

6:00

they briefed what this was. I looked around

6:02

the room and I could see the shocked look on

6:05

people's faces.

6:08

This travel ban includes people arriving from seven

6:10

countries Iran, Iraq,

6:12

Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,

6:15

and Yemen. And because no one thought

6:17

to ask DHS, the specifics

6:19

are a mess. People are showing up

6:21

at airports in total disarray. Green

6:24

cardholders are told they're exempt than

6:26

not exempt. Refugees promised

6:28

asylum are suddenly not allowed into

6:30

the country, and family members arrive

6:33

in America after long journeys

6:35

to find they can't see their sick relatives

6:37

or their loved ones. There were

6:39

so many news reports about the chaos this

6:42

caused, like this story on CNN.

6:45

Nemo Hashi is a broken wife

6:47

without her husband, the mother of a

6:49

toddler without her father, but

6:51

on government papers, she's a Somali

6:54

refugee, her husband trapped

6:56

in Africa and the legal tug of war

6:58

over the travel ban. The last time

7:00

how she saw her husband was in a refugee camp

7:02

and eat the opia. Both had fled

7:05

the bloody war in Somalia.

7:09

So President Trump ordered

7:12

this initial ban without consulting

7:14

experts like Olivia, who are left

7:16

cleaning up the mess. But then,

7:18

even as it's becoming clear the policy is

7:20

a disaster, he decides he wants

7:23

DHS to come up with a bigger

7:25

list of countries, more than the original

7:27

seven. He's thinking citizens

7:30

from dozens and dozens of countries

7:32

should be blocked from coming into the United States,

7:36

and his advisors are pressuring people

7:38

at DHS like Olivia to

7:40

come up with a list and say that

7:42

it's for national security reasons.

7:44

Within hours, we got to notice

7:47

that, said me in the conference room.

7:48

We went in there and they say they said, don't come

7:50

out until you have a list of countries.

7:52

And it was like well,

7:56

wait a second, like, we're just making up this list,

7:58

and they're like, you'll know the ones.

8:00

The subtext here, though it's not especially

8:02

subtle, is Muslim

8:05

countries, ideally the

8:07

poor ones.

8:08

I remember walking out

8:10

of that meeting shaking and

8:13

going back into my office and being

8:15

like, what have

8:17

I just done? Like what I

8:20

just took this job to Scott hear?

8:23

What is happening right now?

8:30

I came across Olivia for the first time

8:33

while all of this was unfolding. I

8:35

started a few months into the administration and

8:37

quickly found myself on the same side as

8:39

her. The ban was ludicrous.

8:42

There wasn't any intelligence that showed

8:45

that dozens and dozens of countries posed

8:48

a threat to the United States, and

8:50

yet a White House operative was

8:52

demanding that DHS come up with

8:54

a list. In fact, he regularly

8:57

rattled off the names of countries that

8:59

Trump wanted to see banned. This

9:02

guy had his list of countries

9:04

that the President would want to see

9:06

banned, and he's telling you all the

9:08

intelligence officials to give a

9:11

reason to ban them. And

9:13

it was like the first real moment I'd seen in the Trump

9:15

administration of someone, especially

9:17

in the civil service, being like no,

9:20

we can't do that. We're not going to do that.

9:22

I do you remember that because this person

9:24

came in, I was like, no,

9:27

the intelligence doesn't back that. Then the things that we've

9:29

looked at actually back then. And I remember

9:31

looking across the table at you, and

9:33

I remember the look on your face.

9:35

You were like, WHOA. She

9:37

just took him on both of us.

9:39

I think by that point knew that that person had a direct

9:41

line to the White House and where that was going, which

9:43

was basically going to Stephen Miller as well.

9:46

Stephen Miller, Trump's senior

9:48

policy advisor, the architect

9:51

of the travel band, child separation

9:53

and other hardline immigration policies.

9:56

He pushed for the bigger list that Trump

9:58

wanted. I agreed with Olivia,

10:01

the intelligence didn't justify it,

10:03

Miles.

10:04

I do remember you saying, well, if she's saying that

10:06

it's not there and this

10:08

is a meeting, then.

10:09

This isn't the list, and there's no way that

10:11

this is actually the correct thing to

10:13

do. You were just kind of like, look that the information

10:15

isn't there. She's just telling you it's not

10:17

there.

10:22

So, tasked with managing this policy,

10:25

Olivia says, her focus immediately

10:27

becomes narrowing down the ban to

10:30

create human exceptions, like for

10:32

refugees and family members.

10:34

I worked very hard on

10:37

the travel ban, and very hard on that list

10:39

to make sure that it was done in

10:42

the appropriate manner without completely

10:44

destroying decades of work in

10:46

the intelligence and national security community

10:48

for one.

10:49

And in the end, her team

10:52

waters down the ban, keeping

10:54

it from spreading to dozens of new countries

10:57

and trying to limit it only to high

10:59

risk travelers. But you

11:01

might be thinking there was another

11:03

choice here. Why didn't Olivia

11:05

just quit on the spot. Isn't

11:07

there a line that professional people with

11:10

some kind of conscience just won't cross.

11:13

You've heard why I stayed. To

11:15

understand why Olivia stuck it out, it's

11:18

worth learning more about the way she viewsed

11:20

the world and her place within it. Olivia

11:29

is an old school by the book public

11:31

servant who went into government to

11:33

give back to a country that gave

11:35

her so much. That sounds

11:37

like a Folkesy trope, but I know

11:40

her pretty well and it's genuinely

11:42

who she is. David Rothcop

11:44

shares this view. He is a national

11:47

security analyst and writer, and his

11:49

book American Resistance profiles

11:51

public servants like Olivia, who stood

11:53

up to pressure from the Trump White House.

11:56

I think people outside of Washington

11:58

need to be disabused of this notion that

12:01

people in the United States government are not working

12:03

for them. Ninety nine percent of them are dedicated

12:07

public servants who take less money

12:09

and endure a lot of personal

12:12

risk and sacrifice in order to

12:14

help make the country a better place.

12:16

Like a lot of people we've spoken to for this podcast,

12:19

myself included, the experience

12:22

of nine to eleven was a major catalyst

12:24

for Olivia. She was working

12:26

for the Republican National Committee at the time.

12:30

I remember having to walk home from

12:33

Capitol Hill all the way to Arlington,

12:35

Virginia because there was just no weather way

12:38

to get home. And I remember that day watching

12:41

the Pentagon.

12:42

It was on fire.

12:42

I remember all the response vehicles, and

12:45

in the aftermath of those days, thinking there's

12:48

got to be more that I should be doing on this.

12:51

She worked within the national security community

12:53

for years and years before the Trump

12:56

administration, and the first

12:58

assignment she had in the government

13:00

working in the national security community as she

13:03

did was in Baghdad and

13:05

working in the Green Zone in Baghdad

13:07

and being at great personal risk.

13:10

That was when She'd been a part of the Coalition Provisional

13:13

Authority in Baghdad, the transitional

13:15

government established in i Rock after

13:17

the fall of Sodom Hussein. She

13:19

then worked as an advisor at the National

13:22

counter Terrorism Center. This

13:24

type of grueling, dangerous work is

13:26

the opposite of the image that some politicians

13:29

paint of Washington, DC bureaucrats

13:32

in a self serving swamp.

13:34

Whether it was issues like immigration, issues

13:37

like the rise of right wing extremism

13:39

in the United States. Olivia

13:41

Troy is somebody who every

13:43

single day got up said

13:46

how do I serve my oath? How do I serve

13:48

my country? I

13:52

think a lot of people grappled

13:54

with the idea of whether they should enter the

13:57

Trump administration. One thing that

13:59

was striking me was how many

14:01

of them realized, very very

14:04

early on that this was not going to

14:06

be an administration like any other. And

14:08

many of them had to grapple with that and said

14:10

do I stay, do I join, do

14:13

I resign? And a

14:15

number of them, and I think We're better off

14:17

for it, said no, I'm going to go in.

14:20

I'm going to do the best

14:23

I can. I'm going to do this to,

14:25

you know, make the world a better place.

14:32

So in that pivotal moment

14:35

where she's asked to work on Trump's

14:37

ban, Olivia decides to

14:39

stay. She doesn't think it's right.

14:42

In fact, she's appalled by the policy,

14:44

but she feels she can't do much about it if

14:46

she's outside of government. I

14:50

was impressed by Olivia's poise throughout all

14:52

of this, her ability to navigate

14:54

political land minds while also steering

14:57

things in the right direction. So

14:59

when I heard Vice President Pence was looking for

15:01

a Homeland security advisor, I

15:03

immediately suggested her. By

15:06

that point, I was on my way to becoming DHS

15:08

Chief of Staff, and I knew more than ever that

15:11

cool heads were needed among the people

15:13

in the inner circle of the administration. In

15:16

fact, she was the only candidate

15:18

that I thought could handle the job. You and

15:20

I had a conversation at some point. I was like, hey, trying

15:23

to put lipstick on a pig. What about going

15:25

to the White House?

15:27

It will be amazing, There's

15:30

this great opportunity. And I

15:32

was like, oh, great, where in DHS

15:34

am I going? And you were like, actually,

15:37

what about the Vice President's office?

15:39

And I was like, the United States, Mike

15:42

Pence, And you said, we need someone

15:44

that is extremely competent, who

15:47

is willing to navigate in this environment?

15:50

And I was like, I wonder what he meant by that.

15:52

The translation here was please

15:55

help experienced people

15:57

were quitting in droves or getting

15:59

fired by the president, and we needed

16:02

more grown ups to keep the administration

16:04

from going off the rails.

16:05

Was just sort of like, can I serve this

16:08

person well and

16:11

do my best to make a difference in this scenario,

16:13

even though I know that I'm pretty much going

16:16

into the frying pan.

16:18

I'm familiar with my pets. I had not worked

16:20

with him before, but to me, out

16:22

of both sides of the house, he seemed like

16:25

the more sane person, and he

16:27

seemed more constant, more steady, So

16:29

I was like, Okay, I can go there

16:31

and really try to make a difference.

16:36

She quickly becomes the

16:38

crisis person.

16:41

If it's really bad, it's going boom, that's Olivia's

16:44

I was like, why don't I get the plush Europe trips.

16:46

Why don't I get to go on cool travel.

16:49

No, I only get to.

16:51

Go to like devastation, tornadoes, floods,

16:53

and whatever else happened.

16:55

And she's busy because there are constant

16:57

crises. But she's able to do

16:59

her job and find other smart people

17:01

on the team. At first, it

17:04

seems to be somewhat insulated from

17:06

the rest of the political turmoil at the White

17:08

House.

17:09

I had a good working relationship with

17:12

Mike Pence. He knew that I was always very honest

17:14

and very factual, and that's what I went there

17:16

to do, was operate in a factually

17:19

driven sense of trying to just

17:22

inform him and at the end

17:24

of the day guide him through some of the toughest decisions.

17:26

And he took great pride in making

17:28

sure that it was sort of a calmer environment,

17:31

less chaotic to a certain extent. That

17:33

is year one of my tour in the White

17:36

House that actually goes

17:38

downhill pretty quickly as things

17:41

sort of start.

17:41

To happen.

17:45

Downhill from the travel band

17:48

to Nazis. August

18:00

twelfth, twenty seventeen, Vice

18:03

News was first on the scene to document what

18:05

was called the Unite the Right rally

18:08

in Charlottesville, Virginia. White

18:11

nationalist marchers, including neo

18:13

Nazis, came to protest

18:15

the proposed removal of a General

18:18

Robert E. Lee statue. Counter

18:20

protesters then come to oppose

18:22

the rally and violence breaks

18:25

out, a self identified

18:27

white supremacist rams his car

18:29

into the crowd, killing a woman named

18:31

Heather Higher and injuring several

18:33

others.

18:35

I remember Charlottesville happened, and

18:37

I remember there were a lot of heated conversations,

18:40

the confusing things where there were mixed signals,

18:42

right, I mean, there were political pointees

18:45

in this office that were disbanding

18:48

the domestic Terrorism Cell group.

18:51

And I was like, Okay, we'll wait a second.

18:52

This is on the rise, and we are

18:54

not approaching this in a systematic

18:57

way where this is actually

19:00

like we're like actually going to tackle

19:02

the problem. But the other part of it,

19:04

well, it was clear that, given especially

19:06

Trump's comments after Charlottesville, that

19:09

there was no appetite for taking this on

19:12

seriously.

19:13

I think there's blame on both sides, and

19:15

I have no doubt about it, and you don't have

19:17

any doubt about it either. But you also

19:19

had people that were very

19:23

fine people on both sides. You

19:25

had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse

19:27

me.

19:33

That very fine people on

19:35

both sides. Comment sounded

19:38

like a permission slip for the white supremacists,

19:41

and it played NonStop on news

19:43

networks around the world.

19:45

Then it becomes a lot of domestic

19:47

incidents, and a lot of the hate crimes and some

19:50

of the mass shootings are tied to this. There

19:52

are all these indicators, and we know that

19:54

this is a significant problem

19:56

for Olivia.

19:58

It's relentless, and it starts to

20:00

feel like this is not just a string of isolated

20:02

incidents.

20:04

I probably worked on a mass shooting and probably every

20:07

other weekend. It wears on you. I

20:09

remember every single one of them, and I remember

20:11

all the stats.

20:12

I remember all.

20:12

The people that have passed away, the kids and families,

20:15

and what I started

20:17

to see were the disturbing patterns where this

20:20

was violence.

20:22

It was on the rise.

20:22

There were certain sort

20:25

of hateful movements that were

20:27

driving a lot of these, and a lot of it was

20:29

tied to the president's rhetoric at

20:31

the time and what he was saying.

20:33

But when she and her colleagues try to

20:35

push for more attention on combating

20:38

domestic terrorism, it's clearly

20:40

not a priority, and it's awkward.

20:43

It was very hard to go in and brief

20:46

on these types of situations and say, you

20:48

know, just so you know, we

20:51

found Trump paraphernalia in the van on

20:53

some of these attacks, or just so you know, he quoted something

20:56

in the manifesto before he went in, and

20:58

then it happens in my own hometown.

21:01

Panic in El Paso this morning, when a day

21:03

of shopping, let's go, Let's go, turned

21:05

into warror with an active shooter on

21:07

the loose. Multiple victims are being

21:09

treated at area hospitals.

21:14

August third, twenty nineteen, a

21:17

chilling report from NBC News details

21:19

how twenty three people, most of them

21:22

Latino, have been murdered at a

21:24

Walmart in El Paso, Texas. It's

21:26

a targeted attack, and the shooter

21:29

leaves behind a manifesto.

21:31

He was talking about this, you know, nativism

21:34

theory, and he makes references

21:37

to many of the things that Trump had

21:39

said, a lot of the things that were being said

21:41

on fire right media, a lot

21:43

of honestly, things that Stephen Miller had

21:45

said himself in meetings that I personally heard

21:47

for his hand, and it was horrifying

21:50

to think, you know, this is happening in our

21:52

country, but we're turning a blind eye to it.

21:54

In the manifesto, the shooter called

21:57

the attack a response to quote the

21:59

Hispanic invasion of Texas. He

22:03

used the same language the White House

22:05

had been using to describe the situation

22:07

at the southern border an invasion.

22:11

I had those conversations in

22:13

the office of the Vice President with people.

22:16

It was like feeling paralyzed on

22:18

the issue because I knew that he

22:21

could only weigh in to a certain

22:23

extent, but there was no I

22:26

guess, will or appetite

22:28

to take on the issue further because at

22:31

the end of the day, unfortunately,

22:34

these movements have become part of Donald Trump's

22:36

base because he had emboldened

22:38

them, and these are unfortunately

22:41

his.

22:41

Supporters, aids are

22:43

just disregarded when they try to bring

22:45

up looming issues like domestic terrorism.

22:48

So now Olivia is constantly weighing

22:51

that question that came up during the

22:53

travel ban. Can she stay and

22:55

fix the situation or should

22:57

she leave? But then in

22:59

January twenty twenty, there's a

23:01

new crisis on the horizon, and

23:03

it's a big one and Wuhan,

23:06

China, a mysterious virus is

23:08

burning its way through the local population.

23:11

But it won't be a local problem

23:13

for law. January

23:28

twenty twenty.

23:30

I remember.

23:32

Feeling the

23:35

panic of this being something

23:37

that was going to be really bad. I also

23:39

remember doing the math in my head and thinking

23:42

there's no way that the holidays

23:44

just happened, and given the number of travel, there's

23:46

no way that this isn't here.

23:48

There's just no way.

23:49

With that many people, there are sec They started

23:52

to convene some of the doctors. I remember

23:54

the seriousness of

23:56

these discussions, sort of

23:59

the discussions what is this, what

24:01

does this mean?

24:02

It's unknown territory, but

24:04

Olivia can tell that this coronavirus

24:06

thing is bad and they need to be

24:08

prepared, but they are far

24:10

from it.

24:11

We couldn't get the attention of the leadership on it.

24:13

It's like, Okay, there is a room

24:16

full of people that think this is very serious

24:18

and are highly concerned, but

24:20

we can't get the president

24:23

to really focus on it at the time because

24:25

he's focused on other things and he's focused

24:27

on his trip. I think he was going to India. Nobody

24:29

thought he should travel there given what

24:31

we were like seeing. And I remember at

24:34

some point when we're trying to actually say we

24:36

need to stop the flights because this is serious

24:38

enough that there could be dangerous to Americans and we need

24:40

to really have a serious discussion about how we're

24:42

going to contain this. Because we're still thinking we can contain

24:45

it.

24:45

She has a good working relationship with

24:47

Vice President Pence, but he's also

24:49

distracted.

24:51

It was like an ordeal to get these memos

24:53

of the plane, to get a conversation with Trump on it.

24:55

I remember my boss at the time, General Kellogg, my

24:57

direct boss was the head of the National Security team, was

24:59

like pissed off because he

25:01

was like, if Olivia's saying this is serious,

25:04

this MEMONI needs to get to the Vice president tonight

25:06

because she's telling them that there's going to be a major decision

25:08

happening tomorrow. But they were down at a

25:10

rally and they didn't care because we literally

25:12

had just kicked off an election here and

25:15

that was where the focus was.

25:17

But finally they do pay attention. You

25:20

can mark the moment almost exactly. It's

25:23

a little past noon on February

25:25

twenty fifth, when the stock market

25:27

takes a nose dive as

25:30

the markets closed for the day. Yahoo

25:32

finance hosts are floored by

25:34

what they see.

25:35

We are looking at big losses here

25:38

across the board, accelerating into

25:40

the clothes. We have

25:42

another thousand point move

25:44

lower on the Dow. There is carnage

25:46

basically everywhere.

25:47

What point does the fake come in here?

25:49

I think.

25:50

I walk in and everyone was staring

25:52

at the TV, and I was like, what did I miss?

25:55

So I'm thinking like a bomb went off somewhere,

25:57

and no, it was that the stock market

25:59

had plumbed it based on what I

26:01

guess this lady had said very honestly

26:03

at the CDC.

26:04

And people were livid.

26:07

They were so mad, like

26:10

we have bigger problems, as

26:12

in, like we don't

26:14

have masks, we don't have.

26:16

Enough in our reserves.

26:17

And then I remember hearing the comments where they were

26:19

like, this is terrible. She

26:21

tanked the stock market. We're in an

26:23

election year, like we are running

26:26

on a jobs platform. This is the worst thing that could

26:28

have happened to us.

26:29

No, the worst thing is

26:31

still coming. In

26:34

the weeks after the market crash, as

26:36

the pandemic starts to break out around

26:38

the country, the White House forms

26:41

a coronavirus task Force. The

26:43

President taps Pence to lead it, and

26:46

Pence turns to his trusted advisor

26:48

to be the task force's top eight, Olivia

26:51

Troy. By the end of March

26:54

and early April, the group is completely

26:56

overwhelmed. Thousands of Americans

26:59

are dying, and hospitals across

27:01

the country can't even get the supplies

27:04

they need. I remember, in

27:06

those early days talking to

27:08

you a couple of times on the phone. I was in

27:10

the private sector, and I just remember from

27:12

the earliest days hearing it in your voice,

27:15

like, Miles, you don't understand.

27:18

It's so much worse in here than

27:20

it looks. This is the moment where

27:23

leadership really matters and where

27:25

great leaders shine. But

27:27

Olivia has a different experience.

27:30

With the president, he.

27:31

Was so disruptive, like we would be having

27:34

serious discussions or meetings, and suddenly

27:37

we would go down the rabbit hole on random

27:39

things that had nothing

27:42

to do, sometimes with what we were dealing

27:44

with with the pandemic. Right like half the time,

27:46

it was a rant about how Fox News

27:48

had treated someone over the weekend in

27:50

an interview, and he was pissed off at talker Carletoner.

27:52

He was pissed off in Sean Hannity, and

27:55

he was tasking people during the meeting, like who's

27:57

going to fix it? I remember thinking,

28:00

I just spent hours working on this

28:02

agenda for the vice president. We

28:04

spent hours prepping him, and we are

28:07

not covering any of the items on

28:09

this list, Like what

28:11

are we doing about protective equipment?

28:14

They're telling me on the ground that there are nurses

28:16

making their own gowns and that they're desperate.

28:19

That is the kind of discussions that I think we

28:21

needed to be really focused on.

28:23

But Trump was just focused on other things.

28:26

And then he'd be like, all right, so how bad is this?

28:28

This is like the flu, right, And.

28:30

Soon Trump decides he's done

28:32

with the bad news.

28:34

Doctor Burks would walk in with her big chart

28:36

that she had worked on all night with her team.

28:39

Doctor Deborah Burkes, the White

28:41

House coronavirus Response coordinator.

28:44

You might remember her as the one with the

28:46

silk scarves sitting off to the side

28:49

in Trump's public health briefings.

28:51

Doctor Fauci would walk in with his statue

28:53

and they could be like a medical pandemic crisis

28:55

meeting, and everybody else wu chime in on what you can do. And

28:58

I just remember thinking like it

29:00

doesn't matter, because they're

29:04

going to brief the facts and

29:06

they're going to be overtaken by whatever

29:08

political dynamic is happening

29:11

in that day.

29:13

The pandemic is not a positive for

29:15

the Trump reelection campaign. Every

29:18

day that the lockdown continues and the

29:20

markets sputter, the president's main

29:22

talking points of booming economy

29:24

with record job growth seem

29:27

more and more irrelevant, and

29:29

he blames this blow to his political

29:31

prospects on the doctors for

29:34

the terrifying truth they continue

29:36

to share with the American public, especially

29:39

doctor Anthony Fauci. At

29:41

first, the President just starts blocking

29:43

him at press briefings. Would

29:45

you also weigh in on this issue of hydroxy clorquin.

29:49

Hydroxychloroquin is an unproven

29:51

drug that the President is starting

29:53

to tout as a treatment for COVID nineteen,

29:56

which turned out to be totally ineffective,

29:59

Doctor Fauchi. She starts to answer, and

30:01

then question,

30:04

yeah, I named.

30:05

Your fifth doctor fifteen times. You

30:08

don't have this, he's.

30:09

Your medical efverst correct answer the question

30:11

fifteen tribes. But

30:13

the President is frustrated with Fauci's

30:16

stubborn insistence on medical

30:18

science, so Trump and

30:20

his inner circle start attacking him.

30:22

I think Peter Navarro wrote an OpEd

30:24

and attacked doctor Fauci.

30:26

Peter Navarro was one of the President's more eccentric

30:29

staffers, a guy with a taste

30:31

for conspiracy theories.

30:33

I walk in the next morning holding the op ed

30:35

that's been written about doctor Facci, and I had to look

30:37

doctor Fauci in the face and he just shakes his head

30:39

and looks at me. He's like, what did I

30:41

do? I remember I apologize

30:43

to him. I remember I apologize

30:45

to doctor Fauci, and I was like, I'm so sorry.

30:49

I don't know what else to do. I

30:51

can't help you. I am so that is horrifying.

30:53

I can't believe this happened. It

30:56

was like, we need to muzzle the doctors. And I was a

30:58

person that was having to call doctor Fauci and be like, you're

31:00

not needed at the press briefing, and he's like, did I do

31:02

something again?

31:05

The President is putting near constant pressure

31:07

on the Task Force to end on popular

31:09

measures like lockdowns and social distancing,

31:12

and it doesn't really matter that the science

31:14

says that it's still too dangerous.

31:16

I started to get very

31:20

anxious and upset when it came to

31:22

the discussions on schools. There was a lot

31:24

of pressure on schools

31:26

opening up camps, and I remember

31:29

texting my calling an article about this

31:31

Christian camp where there

31:34

had been a massive outbreak in kids, and

31:37

we were not sure the impacts of the virus on kids

31:39

at the time, and I remember thinking,

31:42

great, so there are these outbreaks happening in the camps

31:44

because we are now pressuring people

31:47

to open up and we don't have the ways

31:49

to mitigate. We don't have that vaccidom, we

31:51

don't have things that are effective right now. We

31:54

can't even get the testing right because

31:56

that was screwed up and the numbers were being inflated

31:58

and light about and compleat.

32:00

Olivia had many moments throughout her

32:02

time in the administration where she wanted

32:04

to walk out, but she stayed and tried

32:06

to fix things. Then

32:09

she found her breaking.

32:10

Point and at some point

32:12

I was just like, we're killing people. Then

32:15

I was like these little kids and

32:17

these parents who are trusting the government

32:20

and following their direction, and we're

32:23

going to put them in harm's way, And like at

32:25

what point, Like what

32:28

exactly are.

32:28

We doing here?

32:32

Even still ever, the public

32:34

servant leaving in the midst of a

32:36

crisis isn't easy on Olivia.

32:38

I was super committed in my role and

32:41

I was very concerned about

32:43

leaving because of the amount

32:45

of work I was doing for the task Wars

32:47

and for PENS and trying to keep things running.

32:50

And so it was like a mixture of like loyalty

32:52

to the job and these people. But

32:55

then also it was sort of like, at

32:57

this point, like I feel like I'm complicit,

33:01

Like I am part of this thing where people are

33:03

dying, and I can't counter these forces

33:05

that are working against me.

33:07

So in late July twenty twenty, she

33:10

resigns from her role in the Vice President's

33:12

office, and not long after

33:14

that, she's sitting on a park bench

33:17

with me. Remember

33:21

how I said Olivia had a right

33:23

to be paranoid. Well, when

33:25

she comes forward shortly after our conversation

33:28

on the park bench, the reaction from

33:30

the White House is swift and

33:32

brutal.

33:34

These are not profiles in courage, but

33:36

these are profiles in cowardice.

33:39

Troy failed to speak up, and

33:41

she struggled to keep up because she was constantly

33:43

complaining about how exhausted and overwhelmed

33:46

she was coordinating conference calls and scheduling

33:48

meetings. Troy's detail was

33:50

cut short. And now she's cutting commercials

33:53

for a fringe club of quote never

33:55

Trumpers who are desperate for relevancy,

33:58

and the price of admission to this club is

34:00

fabricated smears and flat

34:02

out lies against President Trump. Troy

34:05

joins the similarly irrelevant, Miles

34:07

Taylor.

34:08

That's September twenty second, twenty

34:11

twenty and Press Secretary Kaylee

34:14

Mcananey is blasting Olivia,

34:16

who's just released a video testimonial

34:18

on social media that's touted

34:21

by a group called Republican Voters

34:23

against Trump and it goes

34:25

viral.

34:26

The President is so disconnected from the

34:28

reality of the problems across our country.

34:31

We will no longer be America

34:34

after four more years of Trump. We know that

34:36

President Trump cares only about himself,

34:38

given where we are as a country now.

34:41

Is a Tina Tel truth.

34:44

It's a big deal for Olivia to make herself

34:47

the public face of this criticism. She's

34:50

not only the first staffer on the COVID

34:52

task Force to come out against the president,

34:55

she was the leader of the task force.

34:57

Staff Susan Glasser

34:59

of The New was one of the first journalists

35:01

to interview Olivia after the video

35:04

came out.

35:05

It actually gone on the phone with this very

35:07

hesitant, very concerned

35:10

woman who seemed like she

35:12

knew she was about to bring down

35:14

the House upon her, but actually didn't really

35:17

know how big of a deal it was

35:19

going to be. The White House started to attack

35:21

her personally, started to you

35:23

know, say things that were not accurate

35:26

about her personnel record,

35:28

to try to portray her as simply a discrundled

35:30

employee.

35:31

They attack her because the message is powerful

35:34

and it's coming from a real insider.

35:36

There was just the you know, general journalistic

35:39

like, wow, this person is actually

35:42

a really interesting whistleblower

35:44

coming public to us for the first time

35:46

from directly inside that

35:48

COVID House. Was right in the middle of

35:50

the pandemic at a moment when it really

35:53

mattered both politically. It was, you

35:55

know, before the twenty twenty election, and when

35:57

it really mattered to people's lives.

36:01

So what made Olivia go from resigning her

36:03

position to speaking out so

36:05

loudly. It certainly wasn't seeing

36:08

how great my life was after coming forward.

36:11

Olivia says, it was the fear,

36:14

the fear of what would happen if President

36:16

Trump got four more years in office.

36:19

I had been having nightmares while working in

36:21

the White House, and I wasn't, you know, sleeping much,

36:23

just because we had so much to do.

36:25

I started to really think about this every day. I felt

36:28

like I was in a daze.

36:29

I remember taking walks around my

36:32

neighborhood and I felt

36:34

like time had frozen around

36:36

me. I couldn't understand why, but it

36:38

was just such a toxic thing. I

36:40

was watching, you know, a lot of the rallies and stuff

36:43

coming up, and

36:45

I knew that the danger of

36:48

what had happened in the Trump administration and what he had

36:50

done was not going to end election

36:53

day.

36:53

It was going to continue on.

36:57

So Olivia becomes determined

37:00

to talk about what she witnessed on the inside,

37:02

whether it was the mishandling of the travel

37:05

ban, or domestic terrorism or

37:07

the pandemic. And as I said,

37:09

the attacks against her are bruising.

37:13

Her former direct boss, retired

37:15

General Keith Kellogg, takes the

37:17

podium at a White House press briefing and

37:19

says they fired Olivia

37:22

because she was a bad employee.

37:24

He also adds that he's proud of

37:26

President Trump's response to the COVID

37:28

crisis, but quote, I

37:30

am not proud of Olivia Troy.

37:34

But what's harder for Olivia is

37:36

being shunned by all her other

37:38

former colleagues, many of whom shared

37:40

her concerns and expressed

37:42

their own angst over the President's actions.

37:45

It feels like a betrayal.

37:48

Every single person that knew I was telling the truth

37:50

was suddenly my biggest enemy, and

37:53

I think that is that's

37:56

a hard thing to carry, right because then you've

37:58

made all these friendships, you know all these people,

38:01

and in an instant overnight,

38:04

you're scene as an enemy simply.

38:07

Because you stood up and you told the truth.

38:09

It's very lonely and it

38:12

can be scary. After coming

38:14

forward, Olivia faces withering

38:16

attacks on social media, lawsuits

38:18

from Trump allies, and death

38:20

threats.

38:23

It's been really hard for

38:26

my family living in a world

38:28

where you just don't know what's going to

38:30

happen when you're out in public. You don't know what's

38:32

going to happen at night to your house. You have to

38:35

be superguarded. You have to have incredible

38:38

amount of security. I know

38:40

that my address and name has been

38:43

out there on far right

38:45

social chat channels. These people plot

38:48

against me, they plot against others.

38:50

What's been the most unnerving episode

38:52

that you've had to confront?

38:54

I think the graphic images that I got of

38:56

my pets. In some ways, that's

39:00

so alarming that you would

39:02

threaten in that way and send pictures of my own

39:05

dogs with things having been done to them that

39:07

I I

39:09

mean, they're safe, but just to think

39:11

that that's the type of person and

39:14

that these are the things they think about doing

39:17

and taking action when you can do

39:19

that too, it's an animal, right, I mean,

39:22

what would that mean for

39:24

what they would do to me or my family,

39:26

my husband and my mom.

39:33

It definitely takes a mental toll and a

39:35

physical toll on you. It's devastating

39:38

on your entire life. I'm sure that people were

39:40

like, oh, they're seeking the spotlight and things like that.

39:42

It's actually it's

39:44

a spotlight that I certainly never thought I

39:46

would be in. But I'm

39:49

only hanging in there because it matters so

39:51

much.

39:53

So Olivia's decision to

39:55

step forward. Did it make a difference,

39:59

I asked Susan Glasser.

40:01

I have always believed that Trump's

40:03

mishandling of the

40:06

early days of the pandemic

40:08

and then his politicization of

40:11

the response to it were important

40:13

factors in the twenty twenty election,

40:16

and so having some credible

40:20

testimony in effect emerge from inside

40:23

that operation was

40:25

significant in terms of establishing

40:28

the facts for the American people in the middle of

40:30

the election.

40:31

David Rothkopp again, the

40:34

people who are the real heroes

40:36

of the effort to found ways

40:38

to get Trump to do the right thing, first the

40:40

fifteen days to stop the spread, extending

40:43

the fifteen days to stop the spread, starting

40:46

to provide the ppe that people

40:48

needed, starting to provide the

40:50

kind of support that states

40:52

required. The people responsible

40:54

for that, like Olivia troy like

40:57

Tony Fauci, are vilified

41:00

to this day. To

41:02

this day, there are people in the United States

41:04

saying Fauci should be prosecuted.

41:08

Fauci saved lives, Olivia

41:10

Troyce saved lives, Donald

41:13

Trump, Jared Kushner, people

41:15

surrounding them cost

41:18

lives.

41:29

If I would have just kept my mouth shut, I'd

41:32

probably be, you know, in some senior

41:34

role at DHS.

41:36

The threats, the abuse, all of

41:38

that is pretty awful. But what's the

41:40

worst punishment for a mission

41:42

oriented public servant like Olivia. It's

41:45

not being able to serve in government anymore.

41:47

Hey, I'm watching some of these people that were those civil

41:49

servants who drank the koolid and went all win

41:51

that were complicit that are now

41:54

apparently serving on the Secretary staff.

41:57

Must be nice.

41:58

In other words, the people who held

42:00

their tongues got promotions, and

42:03

the ones who spoke out, well, most

42:05

of them are still trying to figure out what comes

42:07

next.

42:08

I actually just saw Annie McCabe maybe

42:11

a couple of weeks ago. We

42:13

were both at CNN together in

42:16

the green room. He looked at me and he's

42:18

like, how are you, And

42:21

for some reason I knew that he would

42:23

get it. And I looked

42:25

at him and I was like, I'm still

42:27

trying to find my way, and

42:33

he just he looked

42:35

at me and he was like,

42:38

I completely get that.

42:43

And you know, I left there that day

42:45

and I was thinking to myself, like, how

42:48

pathetic. It's been two years almost

42:50

and I'm telling someone that I'm still trying to buy my way.

42:55

But that's just the reality of

42:59

how hard this is.

43:00

But even on her darker days, she

43:02

tries to go back to why she became an outsider

43:05

in the first place.

43:06

This is like bigger than just like

43:09

me.

43:09

It's bigger than the

43:11

political party I was affiliated with.

43:13

It's bigger than all of that.

43:14

It's really about what this

43:17

the future means for all of us.

43:19

And I'm just hoping that this never happens

43:21

again.

43:31

Next time. On the Whistleblowers, We're

43:34

going somewhere you wouldn't expect

43:37

to a detention facility in rural Georgia,

43:40

where, at the height of the pandemic, a nurse

43:42

uncovers widespread medical malpractice

43:45

and a for profit system almost

43:47

custom built to look the other way,

43:50

but when she speaks out, her revelations

43:53

reverberate all the way back to

43:55

the nation's capital. The

44:17

Whistleblowers is a production of iHeart Podcasts

44:19

in partnership with Best Case Studios and ARC

44:22

Media. It was hosted by me Miles Taylor

44:24

and written by me Isabel Evans and Adam

44:26

Pinkis. Isabel Evans is also our

44:28

producer. Associate producers are

44:30

Hannah leebelwoodz Lockhart, and Ashley Warren.

44:33

Darcy Peakele is consulting producer. Zach

44:35

Herman is the VP of Development of ARC Media.

44:38

This episode was edited by Daniel Tuik

44:40

with assistants from Max Michael Miller. Original

44:43

music is by James Newberry. Executive

44:45

producers are Me Miles Taylor, Adam Pinkis

44:48

for Best Case Studios, and Barrick Goodman for

44:50

ARC Media. Beth Anne Mcaluso

44:52

is our executive producer for iHeartMedia,

44:54

along with Ali Perry. Special thanks

44:56

to Kevin Famm, all of our contributors and interviewees

44:59

and are in an eleven and a

45:01

big thanks to the teams at Government Accountability

45:04

Project and Whistleblower Aid, two

45:06

of the best organizations for government and private

45:08

sector whistleblowers seeking legal support.

45:11

Follow and rate the Whistleblowers on the podcast

45:13

site of your choice to hear what these

45:15

whistleblowers and others have to say

45:18

about what they believe will happen under

45:20

a second Trump administration or in the White

45:22

House of AMaGA successor, you can pick up

45:24

my new book, Blowback from Simon and Schuster