White House fires multiple administration officials after president meets with far-right activist Laura Loomer

By Katie Bo Lillis, Alayna Treene, Kylie Atwood and Kaitlan Collins, CNN

(CNN) — The White House has fired multiple administration officials, including at least four National Security Council staffers, three sources familiar with the move told CNN.

The firings came after Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who once claimed 9/11 was an inside job, urged President Donald Trump during a Wednesday meeting to get rid of several members of his National Security Council staff, including his principal deputy national security adviser, claiming that they are disloyal.

One of the sources said Loomer had compiled a list of roughly a dozen names, and that the subsequent firings were a direct result of the meeting with Loomer, who was an influential voice around Trump during his 2024 campaign last fall.

Trump defended letting people go when talking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday. “Always, we’re going to let go of people – people that we don’t like, or people that we don’t think can do the job, or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” Trump said. But he said Loomer was not involved in Wednesday’s firings, calling her “a very good patriot.”

The Trump administration also fired the director and deputy director of the National Security Agency, CNN reported late Thursday.

Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Alex Wong was not among those who had been dismissed on Wednesday. However, one White House official speculated to CNN Thursday that Wong could be out as soon as later that day, though a final decision had not been made.

Wong was one of the advisers specifically targeted by Loomer, who publicly questioned his loyalty to Trump and criticized him privately as a “Never Trumper.”

One of the sources speculated that National Security Adviser Michael Waltz may have been reluctant to fire Wong because he has been embroiled in the controversy surrounding the leak of controversial Signal messages related to military strikes on Yemen that Waltz and his team have been under fire for initiating.

The four officials fired include Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence and a former top staffer for now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Senate Intelligence Committee; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz’s legislative director in Congress; David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security who served in the State Department during Trump’s first administration; and Maggie Dougherty, senior director for international organizations.

“NSC doesn’t comment on personnel matters,” NSC spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement to CNN.

All of the officials who were fired went through the same vetting process in the last several months — which included questions about loyalty to Trump’s agenda — that was run by the now-director of the Presidential Personnel Office, Sergio Gor.

Trump praised Loomer Thursday, saying that while she has recommended firing people in the past, “yesterday, she recommended some people for jobs.”

“She is a very strong person, and I saw her yesterday for a little while and she has her, she makes recommendations of things and people,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “And sometimes I listen to those recommendations, like I do with everybody, I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision.”

Loomer didn’t offer details on the meeting but said she’d “continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting.”

“Out of respect for President Trump and the privacy of the Oval Office, I’m going to decline on divulging any details about my Oval Office meeting with President Trump,” Loomer told CNN earlier Thursday. “It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my findings, I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting, for the sake of protecting the President and our national security.”

The Oval Office meeting with Loomer, which was first reported by The New York Times, took place as the president and his economic team were preparing the tariff announcement in the Rose Garden.

Waltz had been in the Oval Office for other meetings when Loomer arrived for an audience with Trump and stayed as the president met with Loomer.

It came as Waltz has faced increased criticism from Trump administration officials and those close to the president for creating the Signal chain where sensitive information regarding an impending US attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen was shared. While Trump has publicly said he is standing by Waltz, and top White House officials insist he has no plans to fire him, multiple sources familiar with behind-the-scenes conversations tell CNN that Trump is waiting to see how it all plays out.

Waltz traveled with Trump to Miami on Thursday ahead of the LIV Golf tournament at the president’s Doral club, two sources familiar with his schedule said, including departing the White House with the president on Marine One.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff who was among the advisers who worked to control Loomer’s access to Trump during the campaign, was present for the Wednesday meeting, sources familiar with the meeting said. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was seen greeting Loomer before she left the White House campus, was in the meeting for part of it. Communications Director Steven Cheung and Vice President JD Vance also attended, sources said.

GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a fierce defender of Trump who was also present for the meeting, brought a list of staff concerns to discuss with the president, one source told CNN. However, he was not initially scheduled to meet with the president alongside Loomer.

It was unclear when the Loomer meeting was placed on the schedule, but one aide said the presence of Wiles and Gor underscored that it was a sanctioned meeting. Gor, who is seen as one of the president’s most loyal aides, has been among the advisers who has been fielding complaints from MAGA world about Waltz.

This is not the first time that an activist has been linked to the firing of national security officials, underscoring the influence those voices hold in Trump’s second administration.

Christopher Rufo, an activist, published internal logs that showed staffers allegedly exchanging explicit messages in National Security Agency chat rooms; Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard within days announced that she had fired people over the revelations. Rufo was known for amplifying false allegations that Haitian immigrants were eating residents’ house pets in Ohio during the campaign by announcing a $5,000 bounty for evidence of the claims that it was happening in Springfield in a post on X that was viewed more than 4.6 million times.

After publication, Rufo said that “I said the opposite,” pointing CNN to a blog post he wrote claiming to have found evidence that “some migrants in Ohio appear to have been ‘eating the cats,’ though not exactly in the manner [then-candidate Donald] Trump described” in a presidential debate. He claimed to have found evidence that African migrants in Dayton, Ohio, had barbecued a cat.

“If this occurred in Dayton, where the migrant population is relatively small, it could be going on down the road in Springfield, where it is relatively much larger,” Rufo wrote in the 2024 blog post.

Loomer, who twice ran for Congress unsuccessfully in Florida, has made a career out of courting controversy.

Rising out of the radical right-wing online ecosystem, she has regularly tested the willingness of internet companies to enforce their terms of service. She once described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and tweeted in 2018 that “someone needs to create a non Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” She was eventually banned from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, now known as X. (Loomer told CNN last fall she is not “anti-Muslim.”)

Loomer — who once posted a video on social media claiming that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an “inside job” — appeared with Trump last fall when he mingled with firefighters to observe the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

During the campaign, Loomer often appeared at events where Trump was speaking and her bombastic social media posts sometimes appeared to preview Trump’s next line of attack. Some saw it as no coincidence that during his debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump talked about immigrants “eating the pets” of Ohioans, referencing the rumor circulated online, including by Loomer, who was seen deboarding Trump’s private plane ahead of the debate.

Loomer also said during the campaign that if Harris, who is half Indian, won, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”

This story has been updated with additional developments, comments from President Donald Trump, additional context surrounding claims that migrants were eating pets in Ohio and to clarify the timing of Lutnick’s greeting with Loomer at the White House on Wednesday.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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