President Trump has selected Michael Ellis as deputy director at CIA, putting an ally sidelined under former President Joseph R. Biden in a key role in deciding the future of American espionage.
The appointment demonstrates Mr. Trump’s pronounced emphasis on depoliticizing America’s intelligence agencies and a desire for more aggressive operations against U.S. adversaries.
In announcing his pick on Monday, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Ellis’ previous role on the White House National Security Council during the president’s first term and Mr. Ellis’ work as an aide to former Rep. Devin Nunes on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Michael is a smart and highly respected lawyer who graduated from Yale University and Dartmouth College,” Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “He is General Counsel of Rumble, a multibillion-dollar social media company, which has strongly protected our Right to Free Speech. He will now help our fantastic CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, fix the CIA, and make it, once again, the Greatest Intelligence Agency in the World.”
Mr. Ellis’ resume has clashed with some of the president’s detractors, including for his associations with Rumble, the video platform rivaling YouTube that is popular among conservatives, and with Mr. Nunes, CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said Monday on X that Mr. Ellis was “the absolute best general counsel any CEO can ask for,” and Mr. Nunes said there is “no better candidate” to assist Mr. Ratcliffe halt politicization of the spy agency.
Mr. Ratcliffe agrees.
“Michael Ellis is one of the country’s preeminent national security lawyers and was an incredible senior director of intelligence programs for the Trump 45 National Security Council—he will make a great deputy director of the CIA!” Mr. Ratcliffe said on X.
Mr. Ellis has firsthand experience with the politics of plum positions inside America’s 18 intelligence agencies. After Mr. Ellis was installed as a top lawyer at the National Security Agency in the final year of the Trump presidency, he was sidelined upon Mr. Biden taking office. The Department of Defense inspector general investigated his hiring at NSA.
The Pentagon watchdog concluded that “there was no improper influence or failure to comply” with federal policy in Mr. Ellis’ appointment.
Mr. Ellis moved to the private sector, where he surfaced in the conservative think tank world in Washington and as an ally of the commercial space sector. He represented commercial space companies as clients via his Nautilus PLLC, a detail he disclosed when advocating against red tape affecting Elon Musk’s SpaceX in a column for the Heritage Foundation, where Mr. Ellis served as a visiting fellow.
In his return to government service, Mr. Ellis is joining an incoming CIA leadership team expected to favor more aggressive covert action against China and other U.S. adversaries abroad.
Mr. Ratcliffe told the CIA’s workforce to “buckle up” for new missions during a Senate hearing on his nomination, during which he also touted the value of disrupting adversaries’ technology supply chains.
Mr. Ellis has also pushed for a more proactive stance for America against foreign adversaries. When Russian ransomware gangs hammered American businesses during Mr. Biden’s first year in office, Mr. Ellis told The Washington Times the cyberattackers’ calculus would have been different under Mr. Trump.
“I think it would be a great, a much greater likelihood of them paying a price if Trump were still president,” he said in 2021.
Mr. Ellis said in the 2021 interview that Mr. Trump had authorized a more streamlined procedure for offensive cyber operations and that some of it was used against Russia.
While Mr. Ellis works under Mr. Ratcliffe to change the CIA in the image Mr. Trump envisions, the incoming deputy director is not an opponent of foreign spying powers contained in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Mr. Ellis teamed with former top NSA lawyer Stewart Baker to advocate against creating a warrant requirement in a potential congressional rewrite of the legislation in 2023.
In response to criticism from Republicans who viewed the spying powers skeptically, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Baker wrote that creating a warrant requirement would diminish the federal government’s ability to comb through data on its targets.
“The warrant requirement doesn’t fit at all with one of the most common uses of the database — FBI searches to identify American victims of ransomware, cyberespionage, and the kind of foreign government assassination and coercion attempts we’ve seen from China and Iran,” the duo wrote for RealClearPolitics. “Speaking for ourselves, we won’t thank any Republicans who vote to make it harder for the FBI to notify us if we’re on the receiving end of such threats.”
As other national security appointees work their way through the Senate confirmation process, the CIA may have a fuller bench of its new leadership sooner than its counterparts at the FBI or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr. Ratcliffe was confirmed by the Senate last month and sworn into office on Jan. 23, three days after the departure of preceding CIA Director William Burns and his deputy, David Cohen.
Mr. Ellis’ appointment does not require a Senate review and his arrival at the agency is expected soon.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.