House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has urged U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to restore attorney Michael Ellis to active service as the National Security Agency general counsel after reports that Ellis was placed on administrative leave, with McCarthy arguing that Ellis’s sidelining “appears to have been the result of undue political influence.”
“I urge you to reconsider and reverse the recent decision by the National Security Agency (NSA) to place its General Counsel, a career employee selected through the merit system process, on administrative leave,” McCarthy wrote in his letter to Austin. McCarthy also took aim at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), alleging that she “politicized an Intelligence Community position by demanding the removal of a national security professional to satisfy her vendetta against the Trump administration.”
