John Rader, a native of Cookeville, Tenn., will be Hagerty’s chief of staff and was most recently deputy assistant to the president for strategic initiatives at the White House and also previously served on the National Security Council, working on policy and strategy. The new job is a return to Capitol Hill for Rader, who once was counsel on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Hagerty also looked to former Trump officials to fill out his policy team, hiring Robert Zarate, who was on the policy planning staff at the State Department and previously worked for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), to be his national security adviser; Jonathan Greenstein, a deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department and a former Goldman Sachs employee, to be senior policy adviser; and Kevin Kim, who was previously a senior adviser to the Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, to be his national security fellow.
Retired U.S. Army colonel Joel Rayburn, the former U.S. Special Envoy for Syria at State and former senior director for Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon on the NSC, will hold the unusual Capitol Hill title of “Special Advisor for Middle East Affairs.” Hagerty also hired Adam Telle, who most recently headed up the Senate team of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, to be his chief adviser.
