Trump names Will Scharf as White House counsel

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump announced on Aug 9 that Will Scharf, his staff secretary and a deeply conservative lawyer, would replace David Warrington as White House counsel, one of the few major changes in West Wing personnel since Trump returned to Washington.

Scharf has embraced some of the most extreme elements of the president’s agenda.

But he has also thrown up flares at times over matters that, according to his colleagues, he believed could imperil the presidency.

Those included when Trump and his top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, weighed suspending due process rights for immigrants who lack legal residency status in early 2025.

Trump announced the plan on his social media website, saying that Scharf would begin in September.

The move reflects one of the biggest changes in senior staff during the President’s second term, which has been relatively stable compared with the revolving door of his first four years in the White House.

Trump said that Warrington, who served as the general counsel of his 2024 campaign, had “done a truly outstanding job”.

Trump also said he knew Scharf “well”, noting that Scharf had worked on his personal legal team while Trump faced numerous criminal and civil cases during his four years out of office.

Scharf ran unsuccessfully for attorney-general of Missouri before the second Trump term.

Trump did not say who would succeed Scharf as staff secretary.

The role, a vital one in the White House, is supposed to serve as the last stop for paper flow to the president, although Trump’s allies have repeatedly found ways to bring him information through other channels during both of his presidential terms.

Scharf previously served as a federal prosecutor, as well as a clerk for two federal judges.

He was part of the team that worked on arguments before the Supreme Court in 2024 about whether Trump had immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office.

That argument was in connection with federal charges against Trump over his efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election.

The Supreme Court ruled that presidents have broad immunity for official acts, a decision that nullified the President’s federal indictments and, people close to Trump have said, emboldened him to dramatically expand executive power in his second presidency.

Scharf jointly presented with Miller last week, with cameras present in the Oval Office, two executive orders that Trump signed and that were intended to chip away at who qualifies for automatic citizenship when born in the United States.

Those orders came on the heels of a Supreme Court decision, by a 6-3 majority, striking down a previous executive order by Trump that had sought to end birthright citizenship, which was ratified in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War.

Scharf has also served as chair of the National Capital Planning Commission, a move the President made as he was trying to oust Jerome Powell as Fed chair over the high cost of a renovation at the US Federal Reserve’s headquarters.

Trump’s takeover of the commission has played a role in his push to build a new ballroom on the site where the East Wing stood.

Trump had the East Wing demolished without announcing the move, a move that critics maintained was illegal without congressional approval.

A federal appeals court ruled on July 7 that construction of the ballroom could not continue without such authorisation.

The President vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In the matter of the habeas corpus discussions, Scharf laid out the lack of precedent for abandoning due process in a confidential internal memo.

He privately told colleagues that trying to suspend those rights – which are enshrined in the Constitution and which the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld even for migrants – was a line the White House should not cross. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times