President-elect Donald Trump will install William McGinley, a Republican campaign lawyer and former Trump White House adviser, as the White House counsel in the next administration, the Trump-Vance transition said Tuesday.
McGinley will be at the helm in one of the most powerful positions in the West Wing. As White House counsel, McGinley will provide legal advice on policy issues, government ethics, congressional oversight and the powers of the presidency. He will likely be among Trump’s closest advisers.
The White House counsel position does not require Senate confirmation.
“Bill is a smart and tenacious lawyer who will help me advance our America First agenda while fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement,” Trump said in a statement announcing the pick.
McGinley previously served as White House cabinet secretary in Trump’s first administration. In that role, he acted as a liaison between the White House and the Cabinet.
In his new role, McGinley is expected to be the primary conduit between Trump and the Justice Department, which the president-elect appeared to allude to in his statement.
That aspect of the job led to significant stresses in Trump’s relationship with the two lawyers who served in the post in his first term: Don McGahn and Pat Cipollone.
McGahn wound up as a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of allegations that Trump sought to obstruct an investigation into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia.
Cipollone was an important witness for the House committee that probed the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it. After the 2020 election, Cipollone also helped defuse a plan Trump was mulling to sack the acting attorney general and replace him with another lower-ranking official offering to advance Trump’s false election fraud claims.
McGinley left the Cabinet secretary job in July 2019. He has also worked at the law firm Holtzman Vogel, as a lobbyist for a connected firm and has held various positions providing legal advice to the Republican National Committee.