Trump Just Made the Man Who Hands Him Executive Orders His Top Lawyer

President Donald Trump named White House staff secretary Will Scharf as his next White House counsel on Monday, elevating one of the most-photographed and least-quoted officials in the building to the job of the administration's top in-house lawyer. Scharf replaces David Warrington effective September 1.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social in characteristically short form. "Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart!" the president wrote. "He also loves our Country, and respects the Law."

Scharf, 40, has been a fixture of the second term's visual record without most viewers knowing his name. As staff secretary he controls the paper that reaches the Resolute Desk, managing the flow of information, briefing memos and executive orders into and out of the Oval Office. He is the man who stands beside the president at signing ceremonies and hands him the folder. That role, largely invisible in previous administrations, has been unusually prominent in an administration that has governed heavily through executive orders signed on camera.

His résumé is conventional for the job and less conventional for this White House. Scharf graduated from Princeton University and took his law degree at Harvard Law School. From 2020 to 2022 he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Missouri, where he prosecuted violent crime. He also chairs the National Capital Planning Commission, the federal body that reviews building projects in Washington, including the president's triumphal arch.

The counsel's office advises the president and his staff on the legal limits of what they are trying to do, clears nominations, handles conflicts questions and manages the administration's response when Congress starts issuing demands for documents. That last function explains the timing. The appointment lands weeks before a midterm election in which Democrats could retake one or both chambers, a result that would open the administration to the kind of sustained investigative pressure that followed the House flipping in 2018.

The announcement also arrives during an unusually heavy stretch of turnover at the top of the administration's legal apparatus. Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal attorney, was confirmed as attorney general by the Senate on a 50-49 vote in the early hours of August 9 and was sworn in at the Justice Department days later. With Blanche at Main Justice and Scharf in the West Wing counsel's office, two of the government's most consequential legal posts will be held by men who came to them through proximity to Trump rather than through the traditional pipeline of law firm and department leadership.