WASHINGTON — Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the hawkish adviser who has popped up in numerous Trump administration departments over the previous three years,
WASHINGTON — Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the hawkish adviser who has popped up in numerous Trump administration departments over the previous three years, is again in a authorities constructing, this time on the Pentagon.
Mr. Cohen-Watnick’s newest place within the Trump administration is deputy assistant secretary of protection for counternarcotics and international threats, Pentagon officers mentioned on Monday. The job, which doesn’t require Senate affirmation, can be Mr. Cohen-Watnick’s third stint within the administration.
His first was on the White Home in 2017 and commenced throughout the short-lived tenure of President Trump’s first nationwide safety adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Mr. Cohen-Watnick didn’t get together with Mr. Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster, and was pushed out.
Perhaps more significant, Mr. Cohen-Watnick was swept up in the tumult of early 2017 when Mr. Trump accused the Obama administration, without evidence, of wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower.
The president’s allegations were bolstered by Representative Devin Nunes of California, then the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who said he had evidence that Mr. Trump’s communications were incidentally swept up in surveillance of foreigners by American spy agencies.
Mr. Nunes did not divulge the sources of this information, but American officials later told The New York Times that Mr. Cohen-Watnick, at the instruction of two senior White House officials, helped print intelligence reports that later served as Mr. Nunes’s proof. Mr. Nunes later publicly denied that he got the reports from Mr. Cohen-Watnick.
In April 2018, Mr. Cohen-Watnick was named national security adviser to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time. Mr. Sessions resigned, at Mr. Trump’s request, after the November 2018 midterm elections. Mr. Cohen-Watnick then decided to attend law school.
His new post at the Pentagon was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Mr. Cohen-Watnick has held a Defense Department position before. From 2010 to 2014, he worked at United States Southern Command on countering drug and human trafficking and money laundering.