President-elect Joe Biden has chosen cybersecurity veteran Lisa Monaco as his nominee for Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department (DoJ), and according to a Politico report, is getting ready to name Anne Neuberger deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity on the President’s National Security Council (NSC).
Monaco served as President Obama’s Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism from 2013-2017. In that role, she served as Obama’s chief cybersecurity advisor and led policy to protect the U.S. against cyber and terrorist threats.
Previously, Monaco served as Assistant Attorney General for National Security at DoJ, and as Chief of Staff at the FBI under then-Director Robert Mueller.
“What is most critical I think in the days ahead is not actually a challenge at all, but an opportunity,” Monaco said today at a Biden event to announce several nominations, including that of Merrick Garland as Attorney General.
That opportunity, she explained, is for “this team, and for the career professionals who make up the Justice Department, to reaffirm its norms and traditions. To do justice, without fear or favor. To keep the American people safe, and to do so, always consistent with the rule of law.”
Biden called Monaco “the definition of what a public servant should be.” He said Monaco had “elevated cybersecurity to a top priority” as Assistant Attorney General, and emphasized it’s “even more consequential today than it was then.”
For her part, Neuberger has served at NSA for more than a decade and has been the agency’s Director of Cybersecurity since 2019. The newly created role she would fill on the NSC would task Neuberger with coordinating the federal government’s cybersecurity efforts.
