White House benches career National Security Council who served during Biden administration
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A National Security Council spokesperson has denied that NSC staffers are being vetted for political affiliations. The White House has sent more than 150 civil service experts home from key roles at the National Security Council while Trump administration officials decide whether they are sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump and supportive of his agenda.
![[Eugene Vindman, left, and his brother Alexander, right, were central figures in the 2020 impeachment of Donald Trump. Eugene Vindman is now a congressman representing a district in Virginia]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/05/21/19/GettyImages-2081537048.jpg)
Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, a former Florida congressman who resigned from the House of Representatives to take up his White House post on Monday, ordered the 160 “detainees” — federal workers from agencies such as the State Department, CIA, and Defense Department — to work from home and be available for consultations with political appointees if needed while the new administration decides who, if anyone, will be asked to remain.
The career employees who serve at the NSC typically do so for several years at a time and are meant to provide expertise and institutional knowledge at the White House office responsible for foreign policy and national security advice to the president and his top aides.
Waltz had previously indicated a desire to purge the NSC of so-called “holdovers” who served during the previous Biden administration, citing a desire to ensure that those working there are loyal to Trump’s agenda. During Trump’s first term, two serving Army officers detailed to the NSC from the Pentagon — twin brothers Alexander and Eugene Vindman — became embroiled in the House investigation that led to Trump’s first impeachment after Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert, listened to Trump threaten to withhold military aid to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unless the Ukrainian leader announced sham investigations into then-former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
