2. Executive Office of the President · Minor
Give the NSC its own counsel
Printed page 53 2. Executive Office of the President
“For instance, the NSC needs its own counsel to inform what legal options can be provided to the President. The White House Counsel should be part of that policy process as the President's top legal adviser.”
What has happened
- Not started
The NSC does not have its own counsel; its lawyer sits in the White House Counsel's office. NSPM-1 names, as a regular non-voting invitee to the Council and to the Principals Committee, "the Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs and Legal Counsel to the National Security Advisor" — a dual-hatted post whose home is the President's counsel's office, not the Council. The order's other limb of this ask is satisfied: the Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President is a standing invitee to both bodies, so the White House Counsel is in the policy process as the Quote wants. The counsel the Quote asks the NSC to have of its own is the part that is missing.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Read NSPM-1 in full; sections A.3(c) and B.3(a)(ii) list the invitees quoted. Lawfare’s July 2026 account reports that the NSC legal adviser position was “collapsed into the more politically pliable White House Counsel’s Office” (https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-the-white-house-broke-the-nsc-and-how-to-fix-it); that is a lead consistent with the Primary text and is not needed to carry the Status.
- Action
- create
- Object
- NSC counsel
- ID
- 70