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Ever since a “senior official in the Trump administration” penned an anonymous 2018 New York Times column attacking President Trump as unfit for office, Washington has been engrossed in a high-stakes whodunit. After an exhaustive investigation, the White House believes it’s cracked the case, identifying Trump's turncoat as his former deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, according to people familiar with the internal probe. Rather than fire Coates, the White House has quietly transferred her to the Department of Energy, where she awaits special assignment in Saudi Arabia -- far from the president. Trump effectively demoted Coates just four months...

“I respect Donald Trump’s actions on escorting [Vindman] out of the White House because he, as a team player, he should have brought it up through the chain of command, and then blown the whistle if it didn’t get approved,” Petry said Sunday.

President Trump is making good on his promises to “drain the swamp” and cut Obama-era holdovers from his staffs, especially the critical and recently controversial National Security Council. Officials confirmed that Trump and national security adviser Robert O’Brien have cut 70 positions inherited from former President Barack Obama, who had fattened the staff to 200. Since entering the White House, Trump has relied on staffs smaller than previous administrations and has noted how prior president’s had a much smaller NSC team.

The White House plans to transfer Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, whose testimony in the House impeachment hearings infuriated President Trump and his allies, out of the National Security Council staff as early as Friday, two senior administration officials said. It was not immediately clear where he would next be sent within the Defense Department, one administration official said, but Colonel Vindman is on active duty in the military. The action comes just days after Mr. Trump was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial that turned in part on the testimony of Colonel Vindman and other administration officials who described...

In November Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Ron Johnson (R-WI) blasted Lt. Col Vindman in an 11-page letter written to ranking member of the House Intel Committee Devin Nunes and Rep. Jim Jordan. Senator Johnson wrote the Congressman a letter to provide his first-hand information and perspective on events relevant to the impeachment inquiry.Johnson traveled to Ukraine with special envoy Kurt Volker, spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in person and spoke to President Trump about the hold on military aid — unlike all of the ‘witnesses’ Schiff has dragged in to testify using...

The plot against President Donald Trump to oust him from his White House position — or, barring that, render his leadership completely ineffective — has just grown a bit deeper, a bit darker, a bit closer to home. A memo circulated by Rich Higgins, a National Security Council staffer who was fired by H.R. McMaster, apparently outlined some of the key “deep state” players who would like nothing more than to see Trump gone — players that included “globalists, bankers, Islamists and establishment Republicans,” according to a copy of the document, obtained by Breitbart. Here’s more of the story, from...

Several Obama holdovers who led initiatives at odds with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy remain on the staff of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. About 40 of the National Security Council’s (NSC) 250 officials — nearly one in six — are Obama administration holdovers, according to TheDCNF’s analysis. The holdovers include NSC directors for Korea, China, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Israel-Palestine, South America, North Africa and sub-Sahara Africa. Holdovers also advise on weapons of mass destruction, counterterrorism, non-proliferation, arms control, defense policy, immigration, and homeland preparedness. It’s been common practice...

The memo at the heart of the latest blowup at the National Security Council paints a dark picture of media, academics, the “deep state,” and other enemies allegedly working to subvert U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a copy of the document obtained by Foreign Policy. The seven-page document, which eventually landed on the president’s desk, precipitated a crisis that led to the departure of several high-level NSC officials tied to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The author of the memo, Rich Higgins, who was in the strategic planning office at the NSC, was among those recently pushed out.

I used to think current National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster was possibly worth having around. His book decrying the Vietnam War seemed credible and pointed to him having some sense about his philosophy regarding the exertion of American force abroad. He dug into the lies that led to the runup of the calamity that was the Vietnam War, full of stunning parallels to Afghanistan today. Turns out I was very wrong. And upon further inspection, McMaster cannot be allowed to run the National Security Council any longer. McMaster has made his mark on the NSC over recent weeks. He...

National security adviser H.R. McMaster has started to clean house at the National Security Council, firing two staffers originally hired by Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser shown the door for lying about his communications with Russia, and loyal to Trump Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Last week, McMaster fired Derek Harvey, the National Security Council's top official for the Middle East, The Atlantic reports. And this week, McMaster lowered the boom on Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council's senior director for intelligence. The White House said of Cohen-Watnick's firing that McMaster "has determined that, at this time, a different...

Why President Trump needs to fire his national security advisor.Many in the conservative media are urging President Trump to fire his national security advisor, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. McMaster should be fired forthwith, but the reasons being argued are subsidiary to the primary reasons McMaster has to go. The debate over McMaster has been framed in terms of his loyalty to Trump. Though loyalty to the president is important, McMasterÂ’s ideology and bad judgment are what make him unfit for the position. For eight years the Obama administration relentlessly politicized everything it touched. Those dedicated to ObamaÂ’s ideology were embedded...

President Trump gave H.R. McMaster a vote of confidence after the national security adviser's rivals seized on a letter McMaster sent to his Obama predecessor Susan Rice giving her continued access to classified information. McMaster's letter, which his supporters said was routine, was apparently leaked to imply that the Army lieutenant general was helping Trump's enemies. McMaster's feud with other powerful camps inside the White House has been well-documented, and a recent spate of firings by McMaster appears to have ratcheted up tensions. But Trump issued a statement late Friday supporting McMaster.

After spending 72 hours looking specifically at the motives of those pushing almost identical paragraphs including the catchphrases: “holdovers”, “purging loyalists“, “unfettered access” and “Caroline Glick“; it comes as no surprise to hear the administration perceives the anti-McMasters crowd as having “jumped the shark”… “reached too far”, and “exposed their agenda” etc. Ironically HR McMaster appears to be safer than ever in his position as National Security Adviser not specifically because of anything he has done, but as an actual outcome of the piranha approach taken by his detractors. The severity of his opposition’s group-think actually exposed the common denominator....

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world. The adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting. That is a repudiation of the language regularly used by both...

As women all over the world celebrated Women’s History Month this March, little attention focused on the number of women who form the backbone of President Trump’s National Security Council. His two deputy national security advisers — K.T. McFarland (pictured above) and Dina Powell, and the person in charge of writing the national security strategy — Nadia Schadlow — are women. It’s likely the first time that women have held those positions simultaneously — no insignificant fact in a field that’s still male-dominated. Together, McFarland, Powell and Schadlow bring different strengths to the table.

President Trump’s decision to shake up his National Security Council by removing a prominent military leader in favor of political adviser Steve Bannon is worrisome and a “radical departure,” Sen. John McCain said Sunday. Trump signed executive action Saturday adding Bannon, who headed the alt-right Breitbart web site before joining the campaign, to his core security council while removing the Director of National Intelligence and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs. “The appointment of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure from any National Security Council in history,” McCain (R-Ariz.) told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “The role...

A senior adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) who played a critical role in crafting his national security agenda—including efforts to stop the Iran nuclear deal and designate the Muslim Brotherhood organization as a terrorist entity—has been tapped by the Trump National Security Council to serve as senior director for strategic assessments, a role that encompasses the fight against terrorist forces, the Washington Free Beacon can exclusively reveal. Victoria Coates, a top Cruz aide and his longtime confidante, has departed the senator's office to serve as senior director for strategic assessments in the new White House NSC, a role...