WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, has publicly signaled his intention to get rid of all nonpolitical appointees and career intelligence officials serving on the NSC by Inauguration Day to ensure the council is staffed with those who support Trump’s agenda.
A wholesale removal of foreign policy and national security experts from the NSC on Day 1 of the new administration could deprive Trump’s team of considerable expertise and institutional knowledge at a time when the U.S. is grappling with difficult policy challenges in Ukraine, the Mideast and beyond. Such questioning could also make new policy experts brought in to the NSC less likely to speak up about policy differences and concerns.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan is making a robust case for the incoming Trump administration to hold over career government employees assigned to the NSC at least through the early going of the new administration.
“The common element of all of it is we get the best of the best here” from agencies including the State Department, the intelligence community, the Pentagon and the Homeland Security and Treasury departments, Sullivan said.
Sullivan noted that when Biden took office in 2021, he inherited most of his NSC staff from the outgoing Trump administration.
“Those folks were awesome,” Sullivan said. “They were really good.”
The Trump team’s approach to staffing the NSC “will have a chilling effect on senior policy staff across the government,” said Alexander Vindman, a former NSC official who was involved in the whistleblower case involving Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president.
Talented professionals, wary of being dismissed for principled stances or offering objective advice, will either self-censor or forgo service altogether, Vindman added.
