Editor's Note: (Miles Taylor served at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the Trump Administration from 2017 to 2019, including as chief of staff to former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He is a CNN contributor. Taylor has endorsed Joe Biden for President. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.)
(CNN) Last week the White House was hit by a bombshell: A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence, who was intimately involved in the administration's response to the coronavirus, blamed President Trump for mishandling the crisis and causing unnecessary deaths.
The official was Olivia Troye. And her words may change this election.
Troye surprised the Trump administration by dropping a damning video testimonial about the President, and the White House immediately went on the offensive. Unsurprisingly, Trump proceeded to lie and mislead roughly a half-dozen times about Troye.
"She was on the [Covid-19] task force as some kind of lower-level person," Trump said.
Until her departure in July, Troye was Vice President Pence's homeland security adviser, the top aide responsible for advising him on everything from terrorist attacks and natural disasters to global pandemics.
In fact, she was one of the White House officials on the Covid-19 task force from the start.
Soon after Troye released the video, Dr. Anthony Fauci noted in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes that she was a "good person" and an important part of the task force.
"I never met her, to the best of my knowledge," Trump said.
Troye was in key meetings with the President, Vice President, and administration leaders all throughout the pandemic response.
She recounts a sickening anecdote about the President in which he told task force members, "Maybe this Covid thing is a good thing. I don't like shaking hands of people ... I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people," presumably a reference to his own supporters, who he meets at rallies.
"She was terminated ... they let her go with cause," Trump said.
According to Troye, she resigned on her own accord, fed up with the President's botched response to the pandemic.
The suggestion that the administration was so unhappy that they fired her is even more ridiculous because I can tell you firsthand that senior leaders sung her praises to me repeatedly during her two years at the White House.
Vice President Pence personally thanked me over lunch one day for referring Troye to serve on his team, saying she was doing an incredible job.
Likewise, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, another top Pence aide who was trotted out to denigrate his former colleague on national television, gushed to me earlier this year that Troye was a huge asset to the team and that they were lucky to have her.
"And then she wrote a beautiful letter ... praising the administration," Trump said.
In her farewell note to colleagues, Troye makes no mention of Trump himself. Instead, she thanked members of the task force itself for their hard work — including the public health professionals who've likely fought time and again to keep the President from spreading misinformation, confusing the American public, and repeatedly politicizing the response to the deadly virus.
This was no love letter to Trump and his administration.
It was a thank you to the people who've been charged with the thankless (and often impossible) task of combating a deadly threat.
"The same thing with that other young gentleman, Miles. I never met him. I don't know him," Trump concluded.
This one is especially laughable. He was talking about me.
Ever since I went public with my concerns about the damage Trump has done to our nation's security, he has pretended that I didn't see him in meetings in the Oval Office, White House Situation Room, Air Force One flights, threat briefings, and more while serving as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in his administration.
His amnesia is eerily convenient.
But it won't protect him from the fact that countless national security officials like me and Troye have witnessed Donald Trump's failures in moments of national crisis, and we won't be silenced.
Why does it matter?
Because the dam is breaking.
The number of people once close to the President who are now speaking out is growing. Many aren't doing it for political reasons. They're doing it because they've seen Trump's recklessness up close and believe voters need to know what's really happening on the inside before it's too late.
Trump can't dismiss the criticism as "fake news" from anonymous sources. We aren't hiding. We are named witnesses to Donald Trump's unfitness for office.
Troye in particular should be remembered. She had everything to lose and nothing to gain by standing up to the most powerful man in America.
She put herself and her reputation at great risk, personally and professionally, by turning herself into the nation's body camera and bringing transparency to a White House that thrives on misdirection and deceit.
Let me be clear: This brave woman was not a political hack or a deep-state bureaucrat bent on undermining the President from within. She wanted this administration to succeed and for the President to lead us through this once-in-a-century crisis effectively. He didn't.
I know Troye. I served alongside her while confronting some of the most serious national security threats we've faced in recent years.
She's a patriot committed to doing what's right, from her service in the intelligence community to a high-profile position in the White House.
And her words will shine a light on this presidency, illuminating the truth about Donald Trump before voters make one of the most important civic decision of our lifetimes.