President-elect Donald Trump is filling out his National Security Council with several officials who served in his first administration.
Brian McCormack, a longtime energy consultant, and Andrew Peek, a seasoned Middle East adviser, will take on top roles on Trump’s White House National Security Council, according to people familiar with the matter, which indicates a focus on Iran and increasing domestic energy production. .
The National Security Council is an advisory body made up of regional and subject matter experts who help coordinate domestic and foreign policy.
NSC executive secretary will be Catherine Keller, according to several people familiar with the new hires. Keller was deputy general counsel for the Commerce Department and assistant White House staff secretary during Trump’s first term.
Trump appointed Florida Republican Rep Mike Waltz as his national security adviser less than a week after the election. Waltz’s congressional chief of staff, Micah Ketchel, will be a senior adviser and special assistant to the president, one of the sources said. Ketchel previously worked for the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican National Congressional Committee.
Peek is Waltz’s congressional national security adviser and a former Army intelligence officer. In Trump’s first term, Peek was assistant deputy secretary of state for Iraq and Iran and later became the NSC’s senior director for Europe. He was removed from the NSC after only three months during a safety research in 2020. The allegations were unfounded, one of the sources said, and Peek never lost his security clearance. He has a PhD in Russian and Iranian proxy warfare.
McCormack is known for having a deep understanding of energy policy after serving as a top aide in then-Secretary Rick Perry’s Department of Energy and later in the Office of Management and Budget. He co-founded an organization that advocates nuclear energy, including for military purposes.
McCormack was one of several aides who refused to participate in US House hearings on Ukraine during the 2019 impeachment against Trump. Early in his career, McCormack was an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and was in the West Wing on September 11, 2001.
One of Trump’s transition team spokesmen, Brian Hughes, will be deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, sources said. And James Hewitt, Waltz’s director of congressional communications, will serve in a communications role in Trump’s new NSC.
In a statement in November, the president-elect said Alex Wong, a longtime Asia adviser, will be deputy national security adviser and Sebastian Gorka he will be the NSC’s senior director of counterterrorism.
NSC seats often change with a new chairman. President Joe Biden’s NSC has more than 300 people after Trump worked to shrink the group during his first term.