Ex-aide warns White House has secret 'Doomsday' plan – and Trump may be plotting to use it

Former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor issued a dire warning Friday about a secret instruction book hidden in a “secure location” at the White House that contains a catalog of pre-drafted executive orders that would allow the president to do "extraordinary things” — powers that Taylor feared President Donald Trump may soon invoke.

“After I served in Donald Trump’s administration, ultimately as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, one of the possibilities that worried me most was that the wrong person would gain access to that book,” Taylor wrote in a report published Friday in The i Paper.

“The President himself – although I once heard him refer to his ‘magical authorities’ to bypass legal constraints – did not fully understand the powers he possessed, I was told.”

Informally known as the “Doomsday Book,” Taylor explained that the secret book is secured in a location “known to only a handful of people,” and was created under the Eisenhower administration “to keep the country running if Washington was destroyed in a nuclear strike.” The pre-drafted executive orders included in the book would permit the president to censor the press, detain civilians, suspend communications and enact “what amounts to martial law,” Taylor wrote.

While Taylor believed Trump was not aware during his first term of the powers he could attain by enacting executive orders already pre-prepared in the “Doomsday Book,” during his second term, Taylor warned that it now “feels far from fantasy.”

“Three years ago, my concern was that Trump did not fully appreciate the powers he might – in a nightmare scenario – be able to abuse,” Taylor wrote. “Today, my concern is that he’s decided to do so. This is no longer the stuff of cheap fiction. But if we let it happen, American democracy would read like one.”