The Laura Loomer Firings
President Donald Trump fired Air Force General Timothy Haugh, the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and head of U.S. Cyber Command.
General Haugh, a Biden holdover who assumed leadership of both agencies in 2024, has been relieved of his duties effective immediately, the New York Post reported.
General Haugh, who succeeded Gen. Paul Nakasone nearly a year ago, was informed by the White House that his tenure had concluded. His civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, was also relieved of her duties.
. . . Notably, this follows a meeting between President Trump and conservative activist Laura Loomer, who has been vocal about the need for personnel who are steadfastly loyal to the President’s agenda.
The Gateway Pundit reported on Thursday that during Loomer’s meeting with Trump, Loomer asked Trump to fire several National Security Council staff members, including his principal deputy national security adviser, Alex Wong.
The AP added some new context to that meeting:
People speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters say Loomer met with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Sergio Gor, director of the Presidential Personnel Office and presented “research findings.”
When reached for comment, Loomer referred The Associated Press to an X post shared earlier on Thursday, saying she was not going to divulge any details about her Oval Office meeting with Trump “out of respect” for the president.
Apparently this is not the same meeting that was reported in a Politico story I linked here on Sunday:
On Wednesday evening [March 26] — following a brutal day of headlines surrounding the now-infamous Signal chat — Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles and top personnel official Sergio Gor gently offered President Donald Trump some advice in a private meeting.
So this meeting was a different one, Laura Loomer was there, and the personnel matters went beyond NSC staff. One outcome of this April 2 meeting was released yesterday:
President Donald Trump has dramatically fired several members of his National Security Council team.
. . . The dismissals come after National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat where top administration officials were discussing an attack on the Houthis in Yemen.
However, The New York Times reported Thursday morning that far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office on Wednesday and pressed for National Security Council (NSC) firings.
. . . Loomer came to the White House armed with research that purportedly showed some NSC staffers were not loyal enough to the president's agenda.
This was apparently a follow-on to the March 26 meeting with Trump, Vance, Waltz, Wiles, and Gor. The story continues,
'NSC doesn't comment on personnel matters,' was the official line from NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes.
But CNN reported Thursday that the individuals fired were Brian Walsh, Thomas Boodry and David Feith.
The network said that the firings were directly the result of Trump's meeting with Loomer, who Trump's top Congressional ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, had tried to get banished from MAGA months ago.
Loomer, however, has maintained a position in Trump's orbit.
CNN added another name to the three mentioned by the Daily Mail:
The four officials fired include Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence and a former top staffer for now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Senate Intelligence Committee; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz’s legislative director in Congress; David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security who served in the State Department during Trump’s first administration; and Maggie Dougherty, senior director for international organizations.
CNN also adds other names to the April 2 meeting, which had more members than the March 26 meeting:
Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff who was among the advisers who worked to control Loomer’s access to Trump during the campaign, was present for the Wednesday meeting, sources familiar with the meeting said. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was seen greeting Loomer before she left the White House campus, was in the meeting for part of it. Communications Director Steven Cheung and Vice President JD Vance also attended, sources said.
. . . It was unclear when the Loomer meeting was placed on the schedule, but one aide said the presence of Wiles and Gor underscored that it was a sanctioned meeting. Gor, who is seen as one of the president’s most loyal aides, has been among the advisers who has been fielding complaints from MAGA world about Waltz.
. . . Christopher Rufo, an activist, published internal logs that showed staffers allegedly exchanging explicit messages in National Security Agency chat rooms; Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard within days announced that she had fired people over the revelations.
I'm less concerned about the possible security exposure from Signal than many of the politicians -- the communications are encrypted using a hard-to-decode algorithm, and only the phones of designated group members can decrypt them. According to Politico,
NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes noted that Signal is allowed on government devices and that some agencies automatically install it on employees’ phones. He also stressed that officials have used the app in both the Biden and Trump administrations.
“It is one of the approved methods of communicating but is not the primary or even secondary, it is one of a host of approved methods for unclassified material with the understanding that a user must preserve the record,” Hughes said. “Any claim of use for classified information is 100 percent untrue.”
The complaints about the Houthi chat were essentially that the members were discussing "sensitive" information, but that term is meaningless in a security context, and the assertion from the participants that they in fact did not discuss "classified" information -- and indeed warned each other not to discuss it -- appears to be correct. But I'm more concerned about whether the group chat -- which in the business world would be more accurately characterized as a meeting -- was necessary at all. That's the rub. The CNN link says,
National security adviser Mike Waltz’s team regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats.
Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed.
Again, "sensitive" in a security context is a meaningless designation, unlike "secret", for example. We could substitute another word, "balderdash", with perhaps better effect:
Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of balderdash being discussed.
And this sounds more like what in the business world we would call a meeting. These people were in dozens of meetings in which balderdash was discussed. And they were fired. Fancy that.CNN and the AP have the vapors over far-right conspiracy theoriest Laura Loomer was urging Trump to fire NSC members. But my point last weekend was that you didn't need DOGE to investigate the Houthi Signal chat. Laura Loomer was enough.
