President Trump fired six National Security Council officials after an extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office with the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who laid out a list of people she believed were disloyal to the president, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The firings were described by one of the U.S. officials, who had direct knowledge of the matter. The decision came after Ms. Loomer vilified the staff members by name during the meeting on Wednesday, when she walked into the White House with a sheaf of papers attacking the character and loyalty of numerous N.S.C. officials. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, joined later in the meeting and briefly defended some of his staff, though it was clear he had little if any power to protect their jobs.
It was a remarkable spectacle: Ms. Loomer, who has floated the baseless conspiracy theory that the Sept. 11 attacks were an “inside job” and is viewed as extreme even by some of Mr. Trump’s far-right allies, was apparently wielding more influence over the staff of the National Security Council than Mr. Waltz, who runs the agency.
The account of the White House meeting with Ms. Loomer and the subsequent firings is based on interviews with eight people with knowledge of the events. They asked for anonymity to discuss confidential meetings and conversations.
The people fired included Brian Walsh, the senior director for intelligence; Maggie Dougherty, the senior director for international organizations; and Thomas Boodry, the senior director for legislative affairs. None could be reached for comment.
Mr. Waltz was not fired, nor was one of Ms. Loomer’s top targets, the deputy national security adviser Alex Wong. Apart from the firings, several other officials who had been detailed to the council were reassigned back to their home agencies over the weekend, even before the White House meeting.
Ms. Loomer, reached by phone, declined to comment. After The New York Times reported on details of the meeting, she confirmed on X that she had attended the meeting but would not provide details. A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment, and N.S.C. officials said they would not comment on personnel matters.
Ms. Loomer has been part of a group effort by some Trump allies to disparage members of the White House staff whom they consider too hawkish, too eager to commit American troops around the world and fundamentally at odds with Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.
The agitators have used the phrase “neocon” — short for neoconservative — to describe many of those staff members working for Mr. Waltz.
The roughly 30-minute meeting with Ms. Loomer was also attended by Mr. Waltz, Vice President JD Vance and other senior officials including the chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the head of the personnel office, Sergio Gor; and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose brother died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
A spokesman for Mr. Lutnick did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Ms. Loomer was seated directly across the desk from the president. Also in attendance was Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who was one of Mr. Trump’s biggest allies in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Mr. Perry brought a separate list of staff concerns he wanted to discuss with the president, and his planned meeting with Mr. Trump collided with Ms. Loomer’s, one of the people briefed on the events said.
Mr. Perry did not respond to a text message seeking comment.
It is unclear what the firings mean for Mr. Waltz, who has a tenuous hold on his own job. Mr. Trump has so far declined to terminate Mr. Waltz after he inadvertently invited The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, into a Signal group chat in which top officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, shared sensitive details about forthcoming military strikes against Houthi terrorists.
But senior officials who have discussed Mr. Waltz privately with the president say that Mr. Trump’s reluctance to fire his national security adviser is more a matter of him wanting to avoid bad publicity than a sign of confidence in Mr. Waltz. Mr. Trump has made clear to his staff that he does not want to give the media the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Waltz fired. He also does not want to start the cycle of firing top officials that plagued his first term, they said.
To some in the government, the firings have felt arbitrary. Most if not all of the officials who have been targeted by Ms. Loomer were put through a personnel vetting process run by the Trump administration.
The fact that Ms. Loomer met with the president in the Oval Office was first reported by the newsletter Status, but the details of what was discussed had not been revealed.
It was not clear how she was invited to such a sensitive meeting with the president. A longtime supporter of Mr. Trump who has frequently spoken of her desire to work with him, Ms. Loomer served as one of Mr. Trump’s most vicious online enforcers during the 2024 campaign.
Ms. Loomer said that “the White House will smell like curry” if Kamala Harris were elected, a jab at her Indian heritage. During the Republican primary campaign, in which she served as Mr. Trump’s attack dog against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Ms. Loomer floated the baseless notion than Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey, had lied about having breast cancer.
Mr. Trump distanced himself from Ms. Loomer in the campaign’s final stretch after he invited her on his plane to travel to a series of events commemorating Sept. 11, which caused an outcry because of her conspiratorial views about the attacks.
Still, Ms. Loomer has remained in contact with some of Mr. Trump’s aides and has, for the most part, fiercely defended the president while blitzing perceived opponents and enemies with searing attacks shared with her 1.5 million followers on X. She has complained in recent weeks that she has not received an invitation to sit in the “new media seat” at White House press briefings, despite having applied unsuccessfully for a press pass.
Her visit to the White House this week seemed to signal a return to good graces for Ms. Loomer, who in recent weeks has launched a string of social media attacks against Trump administration officials, including Mr. Wong, the deputy national security adviser.
Mr. Trump has spoken somewhat sympathetically about Mr. Wong in some of his private conversations with advisers.
But Ms. Loomer, in posts on X, questioned Mr. Wong’s loyalty to the administration because his wife, Candice, had worked at the Justice Department during the Biden and Obama administrations. Ms. Wong was also a career prosecutor and Justice Department official during Mr. Trump’s first term and a clerk for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Ms. Loomer has referred to Ms. Wong, whose father is of Taiwanese descent and worked for what was a British-owned satellite-making company based in Hong Kong, as a “Chinese woman” and alleged that the family was part of a conspiracy. She speculated that Mr. Wong was responsible for adding Mr. Goldberg to the Signal chat “on purpose as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China.”
Last week, Ms. Loomer singled out an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Adam Schleifer, who had unsuccessfully run for Congress as a Democrat in 2020. Less than two hours after she called him a “Trump hater” who should be fired on social media, Mr. Schleifer was terminated.
Since then, she has publicly called for the dismissals of Maria Proestou, a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy; Ivan Kanapathy, the National Security Council director for Asia; Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., who is Mr. Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait; and Katrina Fotovat, the head of the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. In at least one case, Ms. Loomer tagged Mr. Gor, the White House’s head of personnel.
In addition, Ms. Loomer said the L.G.B.T.Q. liaison at the Veterans Affairs Department’s Center for Minority Veterans should be fired, as well as an unidentified staff member working in the N.S.C.’s intelligence office who she said was transgender and “hates President Trump.”
“If you are aware of this person and have their name, please send it to me and I will post their identity,” Ms. Loomer wrote on X on Saturday. “The American people deserve to know who this Trans Biden holdover is that is embedded in our intel community.”
Last month she started her own research and vetting firm, called Loomered Strategies, that she said would provide high-level opposition research for hire. The term refers to what she and others call “getting Loomered,” which is when she targets someone, either in ambush-style interviews or online. She has also tried to dig up dirt on officials from outside the administration, either because they have gotten in Mr. Trump’s way or because she questions their loyalty.
In recent weeks, she has claimed that two federal judges who issued rulings blocking Mr. Trump’s efforts to deport noncitizens were compromised because of the activities of their adult children.
Still, at times she has worked against some people Mr. Trump considers allies, including Elon Musk, whom she criticized last year over his support for visas for high-skilled immigrants.
Some of Mr. Trump’s far-right allies consider Ms. Loomer a useful tool for attacking common enemies. And the president has mostly been admiring of Ms. Loomer’s tactics. Speaking at an event at Mar-a-Lago, he once singled her out in the crowd.
“You don’t want to be Loomered,” Mr. Trump said. “If you’re Loomered, you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense. Thanks, Laura.”
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter covering the administration of Donald J. Trump. More about Jonathan Swan
Ken Bensinger covers media and politics for The Times. More about Ken Bensinger
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