In September 2018, the New York Times published an opinion piece by someone identified only as "Anonymous." Anonymous claimed that he and "like-minded" colleagues ostensibly served President Trump but were actually answering a higher calling by actively working against the president's agenda. Anonymous even got a book deal out of this "confession." On Monday, former U.S. attorney Joe diGenova claimed to have heard from a senior White House official that Anonymous now has a name and will be fired.

On September 5, 2018, there was a startling headline in the New York Times: "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration: I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."

The New York Times supported withholding this brave resistance fighter's name because the person's job "would be jeopardized by its disclosure." In other words, the situation was almost exactly the same as a resistance fighter in occupied Poland or France during WWII, who might have been tortured and executed if that person's identity had become known.

In the opinion piece, Anonymous warned America that the president was facing a crisis greater than any faced before in his presidency. WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, and 9/11 were mere bagatelles compared to Trump's trials. And what was this crisis? Disloyalty:

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Anonymous assured anxious Americans that the inside-the-White-House-resistance was undermining a duly elected president out of love for country. (Some might call this the wife-beater excuse: "When I blacken her eyes, it's because I love her so much, I'll do anything to make her a better person.")

To be clear, ours is not the popular "resistance" of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The article was shocking when it was published 18 months ago. A resistance movement within the government exists in tyrannies because there is no democratic alternative. You cannot stand openly against the tyranny, so the best that you can do is destroy it from within.

In a constitutional republic, however, the idea of sabotaging a government from within is anathema. It is profoundly anti-American for unelected public servants to treat a president as a tyrant who must be taken down from within simply because they disagree with his policies.

The article has a new level of fascination in 2020 because it reveals that Alexander Vindman, late of the NSC, did exactly what Anonymous claimed insiders were doing. Vindman disagreed with Trump's approach to foreign policy and, in line with "resistance directives," acted unilaterally and unconstitutionally to block him:

We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't. The result is a two-track presidency. Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations. Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals. On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. *** But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

Fortunately, the Trump administration has been investigating this treason — for that's what it is — and seems to have concluded that it's found the culprit. On Monday's Morning on the Mall, diGenova said "a very senior U.S. government policy official" told him that anonymous had been named:

I am told that soon there will someone else leaving the White House, who wrote that article. Apparently, they have identified 'anonymous' and we were told that ... they have, in fact, identified 'anonymous.'

To which we can only say good riddance to a bad civil servant.