White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump hosts his first cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
A White House legal threat to Politico suggests Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is likely trying to oust Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, according to a new analysis.
Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler laid out that case Thursday on her blog, emptywheel, in a post examining an Oct. 19 letter from White House Counsel Will Scharf to Politico’s top editor.
“Somebody exposed an effort to scapegoat Wiles, an effort that likely includes a power play by Stephen Miller to become Chief of Staff in name,” Wheeler wrote.
In the letter, Scharf demanded that Politico retract three stories about Wiles and “issue corrections promptly, or face the consequences.”
Failure to respond within 48 hours, he wrote, would prompt a review of “Politico’s relationship with the White House” and “consideration of all other appropriate and available legal remedies.”
Wheeler wrote, “But flip this threat around and consider the subject matter newly-installed White House counsel is trying to suppress: Discussions about efforts to scapegoat Wiles for the electoral bloodbath Republicans are anticipating.”
On Oct. 15, a Politico Playbook report said President Donald Trump had asked allies about Wiles and mused about replacing her, citing four people with direct knowledge of the conversations.
A senior elected Republican told Politico that Trump had mentioned Miller as one possible replacement. Trump called the report “TOTAL FAKE NEWS” in a statement to Playbook and said Wiles had his “COMPLETE confidence.”
Wheeler wrote, “Trump is testing whether to replace Wiles with people that include Stephen Miller, who (along with [Trump adviser] Boris Epshteyn) is reportedly close to Scharf.”
A day later, Playbook reported that White House aide Natalie Harp printed the Oct. 15 story for Trump, causing a “freakout” in which the president “blew up.”
White House spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said in a statement quoted by Playbook, “Nobody read the story and freaked out because, frankly, nobody reads Politico in the first place.”
Wheeler wrote, “If no one at the White House read the first story, then how would White House Counsel Will Scharf have come to complain about it and the follow-up, you dummies? This threat from Scharf is, quite literally, a legal freak-out.”
Although Wheeler did not cite a source for the tie between Miller and Scharf, both men appear on a Jewish Telegraphic Agency list of Jewish figures in Trump’s inner circle, and both attended a September 2025 Oval Office meeting with Chabad rabbis, according to COLlive, a Chabad news site.
In June, Scharf, then the White House staff secretary, had written memos warning against Miller’s proposals to suspend undocumented immigrants’ right to challenge their detention in court, known as habeas corpus, and to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops at home, the paper reported.
In Thursday’s post, Wheeler wrote, “And now the White House Counsel does something legally and logically stupid to punish Politico for reporting what is really going on.”
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