The December 2019 memo goes into great detail to make the case that Coates \u2014 who was then a deputy national security adviser \u2014 was the author of both the New York Times op-ed and a tell-all book that described a resistance force within the administration aiming to undermine President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Coates, who is not named in the memo but is clearly identified through specific information, was transferred out of the White House<\/a> to the Department of Energy in February, just weeks after Navarro wrote and circulated the document.<\/p>\n The dossier lists fifteen bullet points as the likely profile of the author, and several of them turned out to be wrong, including that the person was a \u201cFemale With Several Children,\u201d a \u201cMiddle East Expert, Pro-Israel, Iran Hawk,\u201d an \u201cExperienced Writer\u201d who had ties to former national security adviser John Bolton and who worked at the National Security Council and not at a Cabinet agency.<\/p>\n The Dec. 2, 2019, memo, entitled \u201cIdentity of Anonymous\u201d and which has never been published publicly, seems to reverse-engineer the search for Anonymous and cherry-pick clues to pin the blame on Coates.<\/p>\n The memo \u2014 which was riddled with incorrect theories \u2014 shows how Anonymous set off significant turmoil inside the White House and also how senior officials were eager to go after their colleagues.<\/p>\n Anonymous turned out to be Miles Taylor, who was the chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security and eventually became an outspoken Trump critic before revealing himself as Anonymous in late October of last year. <\/p>\n Besides pushing a populist trade agenda for Trump, Navarro focused heavily on trying to figure out who Anonymous was. Ironically, for a dossier discussing who Anonymous was, the memo is unsigned. But three former Trump administration officials said that Navarro had written it. Two officials said that he gave it to then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in January, who never believed Navarro\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n Navarro did not have a comment. <\/p>\n Mulvaney was \u201cirritated\u201d by Navarro\u2019s memo and told Navarro, \u201cI don\u2019t have time for this,\u201d said one of the former officials.<\/p>\n The person said that Navarro had shared that Trump was \u201caware\u201d of the memo, and another said that \u201cNavarro was pimping the idea that Victoria was Anonymous to the President.\u201d<\/p>\n Mulvaney declined to comment on the record.<\/p>\n Coates told POLITICO that she had heard that the memo was sent to Trump. A spokesperson for Trump had no comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no question in my mind that it got Victoria fired,\u201d said one of the former officials.<\/p>\n Asked why Navarro targeted Coates in the first place, another former official said only he had \u201cdecided she was a globalist early on.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite telling CNN in February 2020 that the extent of his hunt was just reading and thinking about the book and op-ed, a person familiar with the matter said that Navarro was clearly circulating his theory around town and that he floated the notion that Coates was Anonymous to a reporter at The Washington Post, but the Post was not able to verify Navarro\u2019s claims. A Post spokesperson didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Asked by CNN last February if he thought Coates was Anonymous, he said: \u201cSuspects are everywhere.\u201d<\/a> He also called hunting for the author a \u201cvocation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s shocking to realize senior administration officials were so easily duped by this garbage,\u201d Coates said in a statement. \u201cPresident Trump was not well served.\u201d<\/p>\n The report lists six points that Navarro offered as \u201cmajor corroborating evidence\u201d that Coates was Anonymous, including that she had written under an anonymous pen name before on a blog and had two \u201cindirect\u201d links to the word \u201clodestar\u201d and the Flight 93 metaphor used in the book\u2019s epilogue.<\/p>\n Part of the memo discusses Navarro\u2019s contention that because the op-ed and book were made up of \u201cshort declarative sentences,\u201d that it was likely that they had the person had written previous op-eds or books. <\/p>\n That helped Navarro point to Coates as the likely author, given that she had written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and a 2016 book called \u201cDavid\u2019s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art\u201d and helped in the writing of books by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The real author, Taylor, had never written a book before; \u201cA Warning\u201d was his first published book.<\/p>\n The memo also believes that the author is a \u201cFemale with Several Children\u201d and points to how Coates dedicated her art history book to her husband and her two kids \u201cwho make everything worthwhile.\u201d \u201cA Warning\u201d was dedicated to \u201cMy children\u201d even though Taylor currently has no kids. (The book did say: \u201cCertain details have been withheld or modified without changing the facts in order to preserve the anonymity of those involved.\u201d)<\/p>\n The strongest piece of evidence that Navarro seemed to have was Coates\u2019 ties to the two former Rumsfeld aides who started the literary agency that sold Anonymous\u2019 book, Javelin.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is an open debate as to whether Javelin is simply a mercenary that will sell anything that will sell or whether it is an agency with a particular Never Trump agenda,\u201d Navarro writes.<\/p>\n While Keith Urbahn and Matt Latimer of Javelin had initially said they would not confirm or deny specific individuals had written \u201cA Warning,\u201d after Coates got on thin ice at the White House because of the Anonymous rumors, they backtracked and publicly denied she was the author.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be very clear so there is no chance of any misunderstanding: Dr. Coates is not Anonymous,\u201d Latimer said in a statement last February<\/a>. \u201cShe does not know who Anonymous is. We have never discussed Anonymous or the book, A WARNING, with her prior to its publication. She did not write it, edit it, see it in advance, know anything about it, or as far we know ever read it.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"CHICAGO,](\"https:\/\/static.politico.com\/9f\/eb\/c0b4277947c587c376db6ebc517f\/191127-anonymous-a-warning-gty-773.jpg\")
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