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Trump fires national security officials after far-right activist Laura Loomer urged him to in meeting – report Trump fires six national security staffers after meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer
(about 2 hours later)
Loomer reportedly presented Trump with opposition research on national security council officials at Oval Office Trump ally presented him with opposition research against a number of officials that she said showed their disloyalty
Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist and Islamophobic former Republican congressional candidate banned from Uber, Paypal and some social media platforms, has apparently been successful in pushing the White House to fire national security staffers for disloyalty. Donald Trump fired six national security council staffers after an unusual meeting in the Oval Office where the far-right activist Laura Loomer presented opposition research against a number of staffers that she said showed they were disloyal to the US president, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The White House reportedly fired at least three national security council senior aides following a presentation from Loomer. Senior director of intelligence Brian Walsh, senior director for legislative affairs Thomas Boodry and a senior director overseeing tech and national security, David Feith, have all been let go post-meeting, CNN reports. But that number could be up to six staffers now, according to the New York Times. The firings included three staffers who had been brought on by national security adviser Mike Waltz – an extraordinary situation where Loomer appeared to have more sway over NSC personnel than the official in charge of running the agency. It also undercut Waltz’s position to have his allies axed from under him.
The Times first reported that Loomer, notorious for promoting racism and 9/11 conspiracy theories, was spotted in a meeting on Wednesday during which she reportedly presented Trump with opposition research on national security council officials during a 30-minute Oval Office meeting. Loomer brought a booklet of papers laying out the perceived disloyalty of about a dozen staffers, including Waltz’s principal deputy Alex Wong, to the meeting that was also attended by Vice-President JD Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Waltz himself.
Those sources told the Times that Trump may act on some of Loomer’s recommendations, with the activist reportedly criticising officials directly in front of their boss, the embattled national security adviser, Michael Waltz – who created a group chat on Signal with top officials ahead of impending deadly strikes in Yemen that led to a massive national security leak. The fired officials included Brian Walsh, the senior director for intelligence who previously worked for now Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Senate intelligence committee; and Thomas Boodry, the senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz’s legislative director in Congress, the people said.
The meeting comes at a concerning time for Waltz, who has faced widespread criticism after the Atlantic broke the story that he inadvertently added the magazine’s editor-in-chief to a Signal messaging group discussing sensitive details of a military strike in Yemen. While the firings appeared arbitrary, one of the people said that the White House looked through Loomer’s opposition research and verified parts of it. Ultimately, it found that one NSC official had recently criticized Trump on social media and others had donated or supported a Democratic political candidate.
Waltz and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, according to Politico, and the Washington Post reports that Waltz’s team has been conducting government business through personal Gmail accounts. The firings did not include Wong, who has been one of Loomer’s top targets. Loomer has vilified Wong over the work of his wife, Candice, at the justice department that involved prosecuting January 6 Capitol rioters. Loomer has also publicly suggested that Wong has sympathies to the Chinese communist party.
The vice-president, JD Vance; the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and communications director Steven Cheung also reportedly attended the get-together ahead of the “liberation day” event at the Rose Garden. The Pennsylvania representative Scott Perry, a key Trump ally in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, joined with his own list of staffing concerns. Loomer did not immediately respond to questions sent by text about the alleged sins of the NSC officials she targeted. Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the NSC, did not respond to a request for comment.
Loomer has recently targeted the deputy national security adviser, Alex Wong, on social media, questioning his loyalty because his wife worked as a justice department lawyer during Democratic administrations. She baselessly claimed Wong deliberately added the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the sensitive chat “as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China”. But in the days since Waltz inadvertently added a journalist from the Atlantic to a Signal group chat, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared updates about a US military strike against the Houthis in Yemen, Loomer suggested Wong and other career NSC officials were trying to sabotage Trump by causing a scandal.
Additionally, Loomer has been very vocal on social media over the course of the Trump presidency, especially during the White House’s botched delivery of the Jeffrey Epstein files – a move that not only upset her for its contents but because she wasn’t invited to the ceremony. She baselessly claimed Wong deliberately added the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the sensitive chat “as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China”. (The White House’s final internal conclusion, the Guardian has reported, was that Waltz added Goldberg by mistake himself.)
During the 2024 campaign, Loomer made inroads with the Trump team and at one point was traveling on his plane, before Trump began to distance himself. In that period, Loomer made numerous inflammatory statements, including that “the White House will smell like curry” if Kamala Harris were elected – a racist reference to Harris’s Indian heritage. Loomer has been part of a group of Trump allies to disparage Waltz and his team, calling them “neocons” – short for neo conservatives – as a pejorative term to castigate them for being too hawkish and eager to project US military power abroad, at odds with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.
She also spread unfounded claims that Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s wife had fabricated her breast cancer diagnosis. The online vilification of Waltz and his team took a turn on Wednesday when Loomer appeared at the White House for the meeting. It was not immediately certain how Loomer was cleared to access the White House complex given she lacks a “hard pass” even as a reporter, a sore issue she has complained about in recent weeks.
Loomer sat directly across from Trump in the Oval Office as she made her pitch to him directly to remove the people she was targeting. The New York Times reported that Republican congressman Scott Perry, who had his own concerns about staffers in the administration, was also trying to meet with Trump at the same time.
The effect on Waltz was not clear. He left the White House with Trump on Marine One on Thursday, which signaled support from the president, who last week declined to fire Waltz over the Signal chat episode. Waltz has also recently shown more deference to Wiles, the chief of staff, in an effort to win her support, the people said.
But Waltz’s political enemies point out that Waltz survived the Signal chat episode principally because Trump was unwilling to give the news media a victory, and not because of his confidence in Waltz. His main ally is also perceived to be Senator Lindsey Graham, as opposed to a network of allies inside Trump’s inner circle.