Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the C.I.A., has abruptly demoted a career lawyer who had been serving as the agency’s acting general counsel since January and installed himself in that role, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Ellis, who played a role in a series of controversies during President Trump’s first term, is also retaining his position as the No. 2 official at the C.I.A. It was not clear what was behind Mr. Ellis’s decision to take personal control of making legal judgments for the agency while continuing to help lead it, but the move raised alarms among some current and former intelligence officials.
Stephen Gillers, a New York University professor of legal ethics, called the arrangement “rather bizarre.” Pointing to rules of professional conduct for lawyers that prohibit conflicts of interest, he said Mr. Ellis could serve as C.I.A. general counsel for matters in which he had no interest, but could not ethically give himself legal advice about issues that concern him — including whether policy actions he wants to take would be lawful.
“If the deputy director wants to do something and needs a legal opinion about whether or not he can do it, he can’t advise himself,” Professor Gillers said. “That’s the weird thing about it. He must get the advice from someone who is independent.”
The C.I.A. did not specifically address questions about what was behind the move and whether it raised conflict-of-interest issues. But in a statement, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, Liz Lyons, noted that Mr. Trump had nominated a State Department lawyer, Joshua Simmons, for the role. The Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled a confirmation hearing for him on Wednesday.
“The deputy director is a highly respected national security lawyer and intelligence professional,” Ms. Lyons said. “This temporary arrangement was approved by career agency attorneys while the Senate considers President Trump’s nominee, Josh Simmons, for C.I.A. general counsel. We look forward to Mr. Simmons’ swift confirmation.”
The position of C.I.A. general counsel is normally a presidential appointment that requires Senate confirmation. But it has been vacant since Jan. 20, when the Biden administration ended and Kate Heinzelman, who had been the agency’s top lawyer, stepped down.
Since her departure, a career lawyer who had been the principal deputy general counsel had been serving as the acting top lawyer for the C.I.A. His name has not been publicly released.
That lawyer has now been relegated to the role of a regular deputy — not fired — and Mr. Ellis has given himself the role of principal deputy, which automatically makes him the acting general counsel so long as the position remains vacant. The lawyer who was demoted has gone on a short vacation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Ellis was 40 when Mr. Trump appointed him to the C.I.A. earlier this year — making him its youngest-ever deputy director. A 2011 graduate of Yale Law School who has a reputation as both a smart lawyer and a Trump loyalist, he played a role in a series of events in Mr. Trump’s first term that repeatedly drew public attention.
He had been a Republican staff member on the House Intelligence Committee — working under its chairman at the time, Representative Devin Nunes of California, and alongside Kash Patel, now the F.B.I. director — when Mr. Trump became president in 2017 and made Mr. Ellis a lawyer at the National Security Council.
In March 2017, after Mr. Trump caused a firestorm by falsely saying that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign, Mr. Nunes helped play defense for Mr. Trump on surveillance issues. He gave a high-profile news conference at which he announced that he had just learned that Obama-era surveillance targeting foreigners abroad incidentally swept up Trump associates — and said he would tell the White House about it.
But it later emerged that Mr. Nunes had learned of the matter from two officials at the White House, including Mr. Ellis. The performance also set off what Trump allies treated as a scandal about the “unmasking” of Trump associates’ identities in reports based on foreign intelligence surveillance, but a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney later found that there had been no abuses or irregularities.
Mr. Trump later praised Mr. Ellis over that episode when announced his appointment as C.I.A. deputy director.
Mr. Ellis’s name surfaced again in other controversies. Congress sought his testimony during its first impeachment investigation into Mr. Trump after being told that Mr. Ellis and his boss had a conversation about what to do with a transcript of a phone call in which Mr. Trump asked the president of Ukraine to open a criminal investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., his likely 2020 election opponent, while Mr. Trump was withholding military aid from that country.
Mr. Ellis was also a figure in the White House’s legal fight in 2020 with John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, over a memoir Mr. Bolton wrote that was sharply critical of the president. When the Justice Department sued Mr. Bolton in an effort to block its publication, Mr. Ellis submitted a declaration saying that he had reviewed the manuscript and found classified information in it.
A lawyer for Mr. Bolton at the time said an official who handles the pre-publication of materials written by National Security Council personnel had already worked with Mr. Bolton for four months and requested many changes to remove any classified material from the final manuscript, then indicated there was nothing else. He called Mr. Ellis’s 11th-hour second look “a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton,” and a judge refused to block publication of the book.
(In August, the F.B.I. searched Mr. Bolton’s house and office based on separate suspicions that he may have mishandled classified information. That inquiry is said to trace back to the Biden era, but took on momentum after Mr. Trump’s C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, briefed Mr. Patel about it.)
In January 2020, days before the Trump administration left office, the outgoing acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, installed Mr. Ellis as the general counsel of the National Security Agency over the objections of the N.S.A. director, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone. At the time, Mr. Patel was chief of staff to Mr. Miller.
The N.S.A.’s lawyer stays in office when a new president takes over, unlike a political appointee. But the day Mr. Biden was sworn in as president, General Nakasone put Mr. Ellis on administrative leave, in part citing an allegation that he may have mishandled a classified document.
Mr. Ellis was still on leave when he left the government in April 2021, and the classified document investigation was dropped. Later in 2021, a Pentagon inspector general report found that there had not been undue pressure by the Trump White House on the Defense Department to hire Mr. Ellis for the role, but recommended reopening the classified document investigation. It is not clear whether that ever happened.
Mr. Trump also mentioned that episode in announcing Mr. Ellis’s C.I.A. appointment in February. Mr. Ellis, he wrote, “was selected to be general counsel of the National Security Agency before being corruptly purged by the Biden administration.”
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
Adam Goldman is a London-based reporter for The Times who writes about global security.
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