The National Security Agency’s top lawyer, April Falcon Doss, was removed from her post on Friday after being criticized by far-right activist Laura Loomer, according to two people familiar with the matter.
On July 23, conservative website The Daily Wire published a report about Doss’s previous work for the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Hours later, Loomer pushed out a social media post that criticized Doss and cited The Daily Wire’s article.
Loomer told the New York Times, which first reported the firing, that she “reposted a tweet that exposed [Doss] last week and flagged it for the right people.”
Doss took her current job at NSA in 2022. She is a 13-year veteran of the agency, where she last served as associate general counsel for intelligence law. She left in 2016 to chair the cybersecurity practice at the law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr, then a year later joined the Senate Intelligence Committee as senior minority counsel for its investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election.
In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. — the vice chairman of the Intelligence panel — said “we should be outraged by the firing of April Doss, a deeply principled public servant, apparently for the role that she played in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan investigation into Russian election interference.”
“Her dismissal appears to be the result of a politically motivated smear campaign driven by a far-right conspiracy theorist, not any legitimate concern about her conduct or qualifications,” Warner added. “Undermining experienced, nonpartisan professionals like April weakens our national security and makes it harder to protect the country from real threats.”
The NSA directed Nextgov/FCW to Pentagon media relations, which then referred questions back to NSA. Doss did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Daily Wire story claimed that Doss celebrated President Donald Trump’s ban “at long last” from major social media platforms after the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, citing an article Doss wrote for Just Security.
“At long last, the risks to democracy in the United States had simply gotten too high. Content that enrages, engages — but insurrection, it seems, crossed a line,” Doss wrote in full.
Doss’s 2022 hiring was surrounded by more public attention than that of a typical onboarding experience for NSA general counsel.
In the final days of the Trump administration, political appointee Michael Ellis was named to the general counsel post at the NSA, sparking backlash from critics who saw it as an attempt to install a loyalist into the signals intelligence and eavesdropping titan of the U.S. spy world.
Despite objections, then-NSA director Gen. Paul Nakasone was ordered to install Ellis. But after Ellis was sworn in, Nakasone placed him on administrative leave, triggering a Defense Department inquiry. Ellis resigned in April 2021, and an investigation released that October found that, while there was no improper influence in his hiring, Nakasone was justified in his actions.
Doss was then quietly named to her role in May 2022, taking over from acting general counsel Ariane Cerlenko.
Loomer previously took credit for the April firing of then-NSA director Gen. Timothy Haugh and deputy director Wendy Noble. She argued that Haugh and Noble were disloyal to Trump, saying their affiliation with past officials vilified by the president made them unfit to serve.
As the top legal officer for the nation’s premier electronic surveillance agency, the general counsel of the NSA is generally tasked with ensuring its powerful intelligence and hacking operations remain within the law. The counsel provides guidance to the NSA’s director on a complex web of authorities, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a regularly disputed spying power among intelligence analysts and civil liberties groups.
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