President-elect Donald Trump is filling out his National Security Council with several officials who served in his first administration.
Brian McCormack, a longtime energy consultant, and Andrew Peek, a veteran Middle East adviser, will take senior positions on the National Security Council in the Trump White House, according to sources familiar with the matter, signaling a focus on Iran and strengthening national energy production. .
The National Security Council is an advisory body composed of regional and specialized experts who help coordinate domestic and foreign policy.
The executive secretary of the NSC will be Catherine Keller, according to several people close to the new recruits. Keller was deputy general counsel at the Commerce Department and deputy White House staff secretary during Trump’s first term.
Trump named Republican congressman from Florida Mike Waltz as his national security advisor less than a week after the elections. Waltz’s congressional chief of staff, Micah Ketchel, will serve as senior adviser and special assistant to the president, one of the sources said. Ketchel previously worked for the Republican Attorneys General Association and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Peek is Waltz’s national security adviser in Congress and a former Army intelligence officer. During Trump’s first term, Peek was assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran and then senior director of the NSC for Europe. He was dismissed from the NSC after just three months during a security investigation in 2020. The allegations were unfounded, one of the sources said, and Peek never lost his security clearance. He holds a doctorate in Russian and Iranian proxy warfare.
McCormack is known for having a deep understanding of energy policy after working as a senior aide in then-Secretary Rick Perry’s Department of Energy and then in the Office of Management and Budget. He co-founded an organization that defends nuclear energy, particularly for military purposes.
McCormack was among several aides who refused to participate in the House hearings on Ukraine during Trump’s impeachment in 2019. Early in his career, McCormack was an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and was located in the West Wing on September 11, 2001.
One of Trump’s transition team spokesmen, Brian Hughes, will serve as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, sources say. And James Hewitt, Waltz’s congressional communications director, will serve in a communications role in Trump’s new NSC.
In a statement released in November, the president-elect said Alex Wong, a longtime Asia adviser, would serve as deputy national security adviser and Sébastien Gorka will be the senior director of counterterrorism at the NSC.
Seats on the NSC often change with a new president. President Joe Biden’s NSC has more than 300 people after Trump worked to shrink the group during his first term.
