Trump Names Will Scharf White House Counsel, Replacing David Warrington

President Donald Trump announced Saturday on Truth Social that Staff Secretary Will Scharf will become White House counsel effective September 1, replacing David Warrington.

Warrington, a Marine veteran who served as general counsel for Trump's 2024 campaign, is heading to the private sector, according to Trump's announcement. Trump said Warrington did a "truly outstanding job" in the role, according to the Daily Wire.

Scharf's rise has been fast. He joined Trump's legal team in October 2023 and worked on the gag order appeals, the New York civil fraud appeal, and the case that produced Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court ruling that granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, according to the Daily Wire. Trump credited Scharf on Saturday with representing him "in numerous cases, including at the Supreme Court, during the Biden Administration's corrupt and illegal campaign of Weaponization."

As staff secretary, Scharf controlled the paper flow into the Oval Office and held walk-in privileges with the president, making him a regular presence at the Resolute Desk during executive order signings, according to the Daily Wire. CNBC reported he also led the National Capital Planning Commission, which approved Trump's White House ballroom construction project.

Before joining Trump's orbit, Scharf was a federal prosecutor who clerked for two federal appeals court judges and helped run the Senate confirmation efforts for Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, according to the Daily Wire.

A lawyer who told Trump no

What separates this appointment from a standard staff shuffle is a detail buried in the Daily Wire's reporting: Scharf has a documented record of pushing back on hardline proposals inside the administration, not just executing them.

In a confidential April 2025 memo to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, first revealed by the New York Times in June, Scharf argued against a plan pushed by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to suspend habeas corpus to speed up deportations. Scharf wrote that denial of habeas rights "was a key grievance underlying the American Revolution" and noted that courts have almost uniformly held that only Congress can suspend the writ, according to the Daily Wire.

That's a serious legal point, not a technicality. Habeas corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention before a judge, is one of the oldest protections in Anglo-American law, written into Article I of the Constitution. Suspending it for immigration enforcement would have been a legally explosive move, and Scharf's memo apparently helped stop it from happening.

A second Scharf memo cautioned against invoking the Insurrection Act in response to immigration protests. According to the Daily Wire, the administration ultimately did neither: it didn't suspend habeas corpus, and it didn't invoke the Insurrection Act.

This record shows a lawyer who put a hard legal "no" in writing on two of the most aggressive immigration-enforcement ideas floated inside the West Wing, and the president kept him on and then promoted him to the top legal job in the building.

Trump's own framing on Saturday reinforced that he values the pushback. "Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart!" Trump wrote, according to the Daily Wire.

The White House counsel's office vets the administration's legal strategy across the board, from executive orders to litigation posture to internal disputes like the habeas corpus and Insurrection Act debates. Putting Scharf in that chair means the person who already told Miller no on habeas corpus will now be formally responsible for signing off on legally aggressive proposals before they reach the president's desk.

AP News and CNBC both confirmed the basic facts of the personnel move, the September 1 effective date, and Warrington's departure for the private sector, without additional detail on Scharf's internal record. Only the Daily Wire's reporting surfaced the habeas corpus and Insurrection Act memos, drawing on the New York Times' earlier disclosure of the April 2025 document.

Warrington's exact private-sector destination hasn't been announced. Neither has any detail on who will take over Scharf's staff secretary duties and control of the document flow into the Oval Office that made him one of the most powerful gatekeepers in the building. That vacancy, and who Trump picks to fill it, is the next thing to watch.