At the Pentagon, Miller was angry that the agency’s leadership had delayed delivery of Ellis for months, despite the fact that he went through the standard hiring process and was selected for the position, a senior US official said. Miller then ordered the agency to take Ellis’ oath, a move The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
Mr. Ellis is seen as an intelligent lawyer. But the pressure to install him in a permanent government post has intrigued some. According to former officials, he will likely enter the attorney general’s office under many suspicions and will have an uphill battle to win General Nakasone’s trust.
Mr. Ellis will be a member of the Senior Executive Service, a position in the Civil Service that has strong layoff protections. However, civil servants can easily be transferred in the Department of Defense, so that he could get legal employment elsewhere in the broad department – overseeing compliance with environmental regulations on a remote military base, for example.
When he was on the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Ellis was a trusted advisor to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California. Ellis held several positions in the Trump administration, including as a lawyer for the National Security Council and then the senior director of intelligence at the White House.
At the White House, Ellis rejected a career official’s decision to release Bolton’s book for publication, although he had no formal training in classifying national security information. The Justice Department, under pressure from President Trump, sued Bolton to recover his profits from the book.
A judge who oversees the case issued a decision on Thursday that makes it highly likely that Bolton’s lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, will be able to question White House officials like Ellis about whether the classification decisions were made in bad faith. If Mr. Ellis assumes the position of general counsel, at least for a time, he can prevent this testimony.
Early in Trump’s term, Ellis provided intelligence reports to Nunes, stating that Trump’s comrades were included in foreign surveillance by American intelligence agencies. The material is at the heart of Trump’s frequent accusations that the Obama administration spied on his campaign.