A White House lawyer who was named in the Ukraine impeachment investigation is the new senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council.
Michael Ellis, a deputy to White House counsel John Eisenberg, took on the role on Monday, according to Politico.
Ellis has strong ties to Republicans loyal to President Trump. He served as a counsel to the House Intelligence Committee when it was led by Republican California Rep. Devin Nunes. In his new position, Ellis serves as the link between the U.S. Intelligence Community and the White House. The role oversees the most sensitive information that is stored in the National Security Council’s servers.
Ellis has been at the White House since 2017. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an impeachment witness who was removed from the National Security Council, said Ellis was one of the officials who ordered a transcript of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader to be moved to the council’s highly secure server that is typically reserved for highly classified information only a select few can access. Ellis’s testimony was requested by House Democrats during the impeachment hearings, but he declined to appear for a deposition.
Democrats accused the president of improperly pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, and Trump was impeached by the House on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The GOP-led Senate acquitted the president last month.
Ellis was also a key figure connected to the Republican inquiry into the origins of the FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign. He was named by the New York Times as one of the White House officials who informed Nunes that Trump’s campaign had been incidentally caught up in surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.
