- The Trump-installed General Council of the National Security Agency was placed on administrative leave a day after the role began due to a Department of Defense inspection general, CNN reported.
- The installation of Michael Ellis just before President Joe Biden took office has been criticized for the Trump administration wanting to dig a loyalist into a civilian position.
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Michael Ellis, the National Security Agency’s attorney general who was installed just a day before President Joe Biden took office, is now on administrative leave as the Department of Defense’s inspector general investigates his appointment, CNN reports.
Last week, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller told the head of the NSA to install Ellis as chief councilor on Saturday at 6 p.m. The next day, the agency said it was continuing with Ellis’ installation and announced that it would begin the day before Biden was sworn in.
“Mr. Ellis accepted his last job offer yesterday afternoon. NSA continues its service,” an NSA official told Insider on Sunday.
Legal experts on national security were critical of the attempt to bury Ellis in the role just days before a new government took over.
The post of the NSA’s general counsel is not a political one, but a civil servant, which means it will be harder for the next Biden government to fire him. However, the new president can easily be assigned to a less important position.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was also critical of the move and sent a letter to Miller on Monday demanding that he “stop” Ellis’ installation immediately.
“The circumstances and timing – immediately after the defeat of President Trump during the election – of the election of Mr. Ellis, and this eleventh-hour attempt to place this post in the last three days of this government, are very suspicious,” wrote Pelosi.
On Wednesday, a DoD spokesman told Insider that they did not comment on public investigations, and an NSA spokesman said they did not comment on personnel matters.
Ellis’ appointment came shortly after President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 election in November. During the same month, the Washington Post reported that the Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Jack Reed have asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate Ellis’ appointment on the grounds of ‘undue political influence’.
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The combination of timing, comparative lack of experience of the candidate, the reported qualifications of the other finalists, and press reports on the involvement of the White House create a perception that political influence or considerations play an improper role in a merit-based civil service. could have played. selection process, ”Warner and Reed wrote in a letter in November, CNN reported.
Ellis’s choice also took place when nearly a dozen senior government officials were fired, forced to resign or resigned in protest, with outgoing President Donald Trump conducting a political purge at the Department of Defense.
Ellis served as chief executive for Representative Devin Nunes, a Trump loyalist. Concerns about his installation relate to Nunes’ access to intelligence documents in 2017 that helped Trump politically attack Democrats, the Post reported.