Chapter 1. White House Office

Key Points

• Put an “activist” conservative White House Counsel in place
• Invite outside conservative legal advice to White House Office
• Consider limiting mainstream press access to the White House

STC 2025 Commentary

In Chapter 1, Dearborn makes clearer how a new administration would legally pursue the expansion of the presidency – a step toward autocracy — by selecting an experienced conservative “activist” White House Counsel, backed by a loyalist legal team, and changing current chains of command and channels of communication to allow non-governmental conservative legal advisors to shape the administration’s legal defense.
Dearborn’s implicit call to revamp White House press access reveals a future strategy of favoring partisan conservative media and sidelining mainstream media, to shape public information in favor of conservative views and policies.

Full Summary

Dearborn focuses on the critical role of a Chief of Staff who is tasked with managing both the staffs of the White House Office (WHO) and the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Dearborn lays out the chain of command of the White House Office and its three policy councils: the National Economic Council (NEC), Domestic Policy Council (DPC), and National Security Council (NSC), as well as advisory bodies, reviewing their responsibilities. Dearborn stresses the importance of assuring these positions reflects the president’s agenda — in this case, Project 2025’s political agenda.
Dearborn focuses on the importance of selecting the right person for the White House Counsel’s office, someone who is more of an “activist,” than white-shoe firm lawyer, armed with legal skills and advice to guide the president and the White House in possibly uncharted legal waters, “including recommendations for reconsidering or reversing positions of the previous Administration in any significant litigation,” he writes. He favors a possible change of the present system to allow outside legal firms to provide help to the White House and president, beyond the current closed decision-making channel between the White House Counsel and Attorney General or Deputy Attorney.
Dearborn stresses the importance of loyalists in positions of Staff Secretary, and Office of Communications, and indirectly calls for changing, and limiting, access of the mainstream media to the White House in a new conservative administration, arguing, “The new Administration should examine the nature of the relationship between itself and the White House Correspondents Association and consider whether an alternative coordinating body might be more suitable.” Under Trump, conservative media outlets were often privileged over mainstream ones at White House press conferences.
Dearborn reiterates the necessity of recruiting and vetting dedicated conservatives to staff offices that are responsible for filling approximate 1000 appointments that require Senate confirmation, and 3000 other political jobs. He notes that the PPO staffs over 100 positions during a presidential transition and thousands of noncareer positions during the president’s first term. The same focus on ideologically trained staffers applies to the White House Policy Councils that coordinate the development of Administration policy.