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 senior roles on Trump’s White House National Security Council, according to people familiar with the matter, signaling a focus on Iran and on beefing up 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.
The NSC’s executive secretary will be Catherine Keller, according to multiple people familiar with the new hires. Keller was a deputy general counsel at the Commerce Department and deputy White House staff secretary in Trump’s first term.
Trump named Florida Republican Congressman Mike Waltz as his national security adviser less than a week after the election. Waltz’s congressional chief of staff, Micah Ketchel, will be senior adviser and a special assistant to the president, one of the sources said. Ketchel previously worked for the Republican Attorneys General Association and at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Peek is Waltz’s congressional national security adviser and a former Army intelligence officer. In Trump’s first term, Peek was a deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran and then became the NSC’s senior director for Europe. He was removed from the NSC after just three months during a security investigation 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 working as a top aide in the Energy Department for then-Secretary Rick Perry and later at the Office of Management and Budget. He co-founded an organization that champions nuclear power, including for military purposes.
McCormack was among several aides who declined to participate in the U.S. 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 Sept. 11, 2001.
One of Trump’s transition team spokespeople, Brian Hughes, will be deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, according to sources. And James Hewitt, Waltz’s congressional communications director, will serve in a communications role at 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 will be the NSC’s senior director for counterterrorism.
Seats on the NSC often turn over with a new president. President Joe Biden’s NSC has more than 300 people after Trump worked to shrink the group during his first term.
