Ex-DHS staffer whom Trump said he never heard of shares picture of them together: ‘Haven’t forgotten you though!’

The former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staffer who recently endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden shared a picture of himself giving a thumbs up in the Oval Office with President Trump after Trump claimed he never heard of him. 

“Alas, I’ll take the bait. Haven’t forgotten you though!” Miles Taylor wrote on Twitter.

“I guess the only way to prove it is to tell some stories,” he added. “Maybe until the election. What do you think?”

Alas, I’ll take the bait. Haven’t forgotten you though! I guess the only way to prove it is to tell some stories. Maybe until the election. What do you think? https://t.co/2dJhaLFNlN pic.twitter.com/m3msUsDJyZ

— Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) August 18, 2020

In an earlier tweet, the president called Taylor a “disgruntled employee” and said he did not know and had never heard of him. 

“Said he left & is on the open arms Fake News circuit,” Trump tweeted. “Said to be a real ‘stiff’. They will take anyone against us!”

In a statement to The Hill, a White House official said that “the president takes thousands of photos with individuals he does not know so [Trump’s] tweet should not be that surprising.”

The president regularly claims he does not know individuals in his administration who are critical of him, including multiple witnesses who testified during his impeachment trial.

Taylor worked at DHS from 2017 to 2019. He spent a portion of that time as chief of staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Trump’s attack came after Taylor endorsed Biden in an ad for the group Republican Voters Against Trump.

He also penned an op-ed in The Washington Post that alleged Trump tried to “exploit the Department of Homeland Security for his own political purposes and to fuel his own agenda.”

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

The president in his tweet did not deny any of Taylor’s claims, which included allegations that Trump attempted to cut off federal wildfire aid to California because Californians did not support him and that the president had “a deliberate policy of ripping children away from their parents to show those parents that they shouldn’t come to the border in the first place.”

During an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” on early Tuesday, Taylor brushed off criticism from the White House that he was speaking out against Trump for profit.

“In Donald Trump’s Washington, there’s no doubt that doing this is going to be tough for me reputationally, professionally, and it is certainly going to take a hit at my pocket book,” Taylor said. “This has nothing to do about money. This has to do with being honest about the president and putting country before party.”

.@ABC NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Former Trump administration official Miles Taylor speaks out on breaking with Pres. Trump and endorsing Joe Biden. https://t.co/io8dW4sq7E pic.twitter.com/hBZsncaZz5

— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 18, 2020

—Updated at 12:34 p.m.