President-elect Donald Trump named Will Scharf ’08 as White House staff secretary. Scharf, who has served as a personal attorney to Trump, will oversee the clearance and circulation of presidential documents in the new role, including proposed executive orders, speeches, and intelligence reports.
Trump said in a written statement that Scharf has “played a key role in defeating the Election Interference and Lawfare waged against me,” adding that “Will is going to make us proud as we Make America Great Again.”
Scharf, whom Trump has called one of his “very talented lawyers in private life,” started working on Trump’s legal team in October 2023. He advised and defended the former president in a number of criminal trials this year, including a successful appeal resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision that entitles Trump, as a former U.S. president, to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” during his time in office.
Scharf declined to comment to The Daily Princetonian for this article.
This year, Scharf ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for Missouri Attorney General against incumbent Andrew Bailey. Although he lost to Bailey by a margin of 26 percentage points, Scharf told St. Louis Public Radio that he sought to distinguish himself as a “conservative outsider” opposing “establishment politicians and establishment people in the office.”
Scharf’s political aspirations trace to his time as an undergraduate at Princeton.
Scharf graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 2008 with an A.B. in history, during which he wrote a 112-page thesis titled “Stemming the Tide: Post-World War II Counterinsurgencies in the Philippines and Malaya and Their Effect on the War in Vietnam from 1954–1963.”
“His disposition just reflected quite a bit of enthusiasm for the subject [of military history],” said Scharf’s thesis adviser, Paul Miles GS ’99, in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
Scharf took at least one of Miles’s courses every year he was at Princeton, and in 2014 wrote of Miles, “he was undoubtedly the man who shaped my education at Princeton the most.”
Miles did not express surprise at Scharf’s legal career.
“He certainly knew how to establish priorities in accomplishing his work,” he said. “He was a very disciplined student.”
For his senior quote, published in the Nassau Herald in 2008, Scharf chose words from Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Benjamin Disraeli: “A precedent embalms a principle.”
During his time at Princeton, was involved in Jewish life on campus through the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) and Chabad. He was president of the Chabad Student Board.
In a statement to the ‘Prince’ regarding Scharf’s involvement in Chabad as a student, co-director of the Princeton Chabad House Rabbi Eitan Webb wrote that he has “personally gained and grown from Will.”
“He is exceptionally organized, thorough, and respectful to all,” Webb wrote. “That has left a mark on me.”
His parents, Fiona and Michael Scharf ’64, were the founding benefactors of the CJL and primary benefactors of the Scharf Family Chabad House, providing donations for the purchase of 15 Edwards Place — the current address of Chabad — in 2006.
In 2007, when President Tilghman denied a request by Chabad to appoint Rabbi Eitan Webb as a University chaplain, Michael Scharf wrote an editorial in the ‘Prince’ in support of Webb. Will Scharf also commented on the matter in an email to Princeton Alumni Weekly, writing that “Rabbi Webb has committed his entire life to serving the Princeton University community.”
In addition, Scharf was president of Charter Club — a position his father held before him — and the Interclub Council. He was also a member of the Princeton Alcohol and Drug Alliance. In 2008, following an altercation between two other Princeton students at Charter Club, Princeton Borough Police charged Scharf with serving alcohol to minors and maintaining a nuisance.
Scharf pleaded not guilty to both charges, which Princeton Municipal Court later dropped. According to a statement from Scharf’s lawyer at the time, Scharf planned to file a civil suit for “false arrest, malicious prosecution, and federal civil rights claims.”
In 2005, Scharf ran an “unconventional” campaign for president of the Undergraduate Student Government (USG), the ‘Prince’ reported. He was the only second-year in the race and the only candidate without prior USG experience.
His campaign activities included “a 12-hour speaking marathon in which he challenged administrative policies ranging from grade deflation to the fire code” in the middle of winter.
“I represent the average angry student on campus,” Scharf told the ‘Prince’ at the time, “the student who thinks the USG is not representing him or her, the student who thinks the administration is doing a horrible job.”
Scharf lost the runoff election by 70 votes. Afterward, he told Princeton Alumni Weekly that he knew the race would be “an uphill battle in every regard.”
In addition to his run for USG president, Scharf was active in a number of political groups. He was press secretary for the College Republicans; ran a column in The Princeton Tory, Princeton’s conservative magazine; and advocated for a USG referendum on a Student Bill of Rights, which the ‘Prince’ described as “an effort to address a perceived invasion of partisan beliefs into academia.”
In 2006, when former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman emphasized political moderation as the future of the Republican Party, Scharf objected.
“If you look at the last two elections, the general trend is that the most successful political mobilization efforts have been of … political extremes,” he told the ‘Prince.’
Two years later, expressing disappointment at the Republican presidential nomination of John McCain, Scharf wrote in The Tory, “From free speech issues to immigration to judicial appointments to tax cuts, John McCain has snubbed the Republican Party time, after time, after time. And yet we, the Republican Party, have now all but nominated him to serve as our spokesman and representative in what nobody doubts will be one of the most crucially formative elections of our time.”
“Will Senator McCain be able to similarly fire up the GOP base,” wrote Scharf, “once the maverick narrative runs out of steam? It’s a question that only time can answer.”
Vivien Wong is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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