On October 6, 2025, a surprising and controversial shake-up took place at the heart of the United States’ intelligence community. Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), abruptly demoted the agency’s acting general counsel—a career lawyer who had quietly steered the C.I.A.’s legal affairs since January—and installed himself in the powerful role. According to reporting from The New York Times and Reuters, Ellis, a figure deeply intertwined with the Trump administration’s most contentious legal battles, now holds dual authority as both the C.I.A.’s number two official and its top legal arbiter.
The move, which sources say was authorized by agency director John Ratcliffe, immediately raised eyebrows among current and former intelligence officials, as well as legal ethics experts. The acting general counsel, whose name remains undisclosed, was not fired but relegated to a regular deputy role; he reportedly left for a short vacation soon after the demotion, as noted by people familiar with the matter (The New York Times).
The general counsel post has technically been vacant since January 20, 2025, following the departure of Kate Heinzelman at the end of the Biden administration. In the interim, the principal deputy general counsel—now demoted—had filled the void. President Trump has nominated Joshua Simmons, a State Department lawyer, to permanently fill the position, with a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing scheduled for October 8, 2025.
In a statement addressing the unusual arrangement, C.I.A. spokeswoman Liz Lyons said, “The deputy director is a highly respected national security lawyer and intelligence professional. This temporary arrangement was approved by career agency attorneys while the Senate considers President Trump’s nominee, Josh Simmons, for C.I.A. general counsel. We look forward to Mr. Simmons’ swift confirmation.”
Yet the optics and potential legal ramifications of Ellis’s self-appointment have not gone unnoticed. Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, described the situation as “rather bizarre,” telling The New York Times, “If the deputy director wants to do something and needs a legal opinion about whether or not he can do it, he can’t advise himself. That’s the weird thing about it. He must get the advice from someone who is independent.” Gillers pointed to professional conduct rules for lawyers that prohibit conflicts of interest, raising the specter of ethical quandaries if Ellis is asked to rule on the legality of actions he himself is considering.
For many in Washington, the episode is just the latest in a string of headline-grabbing moments for Michael Ellis, who was only 40 when President Trump tapped him for the C.I.A.’s deputy directorship earlier in 2025—making him the youngest person ever to hold the position. A 2011 graduate of Yale Law School, Ellis cut his teeth as a Republican staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, working closely with then-chairman Devin Nunes and Kash Patel, now the F.B.I. director. His legal acumen and steadfast loyalty to Trump have made him a recurring figure in controversies that have defined recent years in American intelligence and national security circles.
Ellis’s first brush with national attention came in 2017, during the uproar over President Trump’s unfounded claims that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. At the time, Ellis was a lawyer at the National Security Council. According to The New York Times, he was one of two White House officials who informed Nunes about surveillance activities that incidentally picked up Trump associates. Nunes’s subsequent press conference and the ensuing furor over the “unmasking” of Trump associates’ identities fueled a political firestorm, though a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney later found no wrongdoing.
Ellis’s name surfaced again during the first impeachment proceedings against Trump, when Congress sought his testimony regarding discussions over the handling of a transcript of Trump’s infamous phone call with the Ukrainian president. In that call, Trump pressed for a criminal investigation into Joe Biden, then a leading Democratic candidate, while withholding military aid from Ukraine. The episode became a central plank in the impeachment inquiry and further cemented Ellis’s reputation as a legal operative with a knack for navigating—and sometimes stoking—controversy.
In 2020, Ellis found himself at the center of another high-profile legal battle: the Trump administration’s attempt to block publication of a memoir by former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Ellis submitted a declaration stating he had found classified information in Bolton’s manuscript, even though another official had spent months working with Bolton to scrub sensitive material. Bolton’s lawyer dismissed Ellis’s intervention as “a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton,” and a federal judge ultimately allowed the book’s release.
Ellis’s career trajectory took another dramatic turn in January 2021, when outgoing acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller installed him as general counsel of the National Security Agency (N.S.A.)—despite objections from N.S.A. director Gen. Paul M. Nakasone. On the day President Biden was sworn in, Gen. Nakasone placed Ellis on administrative leave, citing an allegation that he may have mishandled a classified document. Ellis left government service in April 2021, and the classified document investigation was eventually dropped. However, a Pentagon inspector general report later recommended reopening the investigation, though it remains unclear whether that ever happened.
President Trump himself referenced this episode when announcing Ellis’s C.I.A. appointment in February 2025, stating that Ellis “was selected to be general counsel of the National Security Agency before being corruptly purged by the Biden administration.”
As for the current situation at the C.I.A., the agency maintains that Ellis’s dual role is a temporary fix while awaiting Senate confirmation of a permanent general counsel. Still, the move has left many observers uneasy. The question at the heart of the controversy—can the C.I.A.’s deputy director ethically serve as his own legal adviser?—remains unresolved. As Professor Gillers put it, “He must get the advice from someone who is independent.”
With the Senate Intelligence Committee preparing to vet Joshua Simmons for the post, the agency’s legal leadership may soon be clarified. Until then, the C.I.A. finds itself navigating uncharted waters, with a top lawyer whose authority is as unprecedented as it is contested.
For now, the intelligence community and its watchers are left to ponder the implications of one man holding two of its most sensitive roles—at a moment when the stakes for American national security, and the rule of law, could hardly be higher.
