A Daily Wire investigation has revealed that a top lawyer currently serving at President Donald Trump’s National Security Agency (NSA) previously worked for Senate Democrats on their controversial probe linking Trump to Russia and has a history of partisan activism.
April Falcon Doss, now the NSA’s general counsel, previously served as an intelligence lawyer at the agency from 2003 to April 2016. Between her two tenures at the NSA, she worked on the Senate’s highly partisan investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Just months into President Trump’s first term, April Falcon Doss took a senior position with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) on the Senate Intelligence Committee, serving as the Democrats’ Senior Counsel in the committee’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The probe, which conducted hundreds of interviews, ultimately failed to uncover evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia, the outlet reported.
The Daily Wire’s revelation that Doss remains in a top role within the intelligence community comes amid the release of new documents exposing what critics say is a pattern of unethical behavior by Democrats and intelligence officials aimed at undermining Trump.
“Doss is a transparently partisan activist who has written publicly about her opposition to Trump,” The Daily Wire report said. “She has called for Trump to be permanently banned from social media for staging an ‘insurrection,’ attacked Republicans for opposing a crackdown on ‘disinformation,’ and defended the treatment of Trump aides Carter Page and Michael Flynn at the hands of the intelligence state.”
In June 2022, The Record reported that the NSA quietly re-hired April Falcon Doss to its top legal post during the Biden administration. The agency made no public announcement, reportedly to avoid “stirring the hornet’s nest among Capitol Hill Republicans.”
The secrecy drew criticism given that Democrats, intelligence officials, and media “experts” had previously condemned and ultimately blocked a similar move by Trump, who had tried to appoint a former Republican House Intelligence Committee staffer to the same position.
The Trump administration appointed Michael Ellis as NSA general counsel in November 2020, but then-NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone placed him on administrative leave the day he was sworn in, pending a review of the hiring process. Although the investigation found no wrongdoing, Ellis ultimately resigned before taking on the role.
The position remained vacant until April Falcon Doss returned—after a brief stint in private practice—to fill it. As a “career civil service” role, the general counsel post is insulated from political shifts, meaning Doss continued serving into the Trump administration, even as Trump worked to avoid a repeat of his first term, which he argued was sabotaged by partisan intelligence officials pushing discredited cyber-conspiracy theories, the outlet said.
