High-level lawyers are missing from top posts in the US government’s security agencies, leaving the Trump administration to navigate a series of domestic controversies and international crises without a full legal support system in place.

There are government lawyers filling in on an acting basis. But former officials who served in Republican and Democratic administrations say that it is critical to get political appointees confirmed — lawyers who are trusted by senior officials and empowered to defend the legality of the administration’s actions to the public and to foreign governments.

As US officials respond to escalating tensions with North Korea, American forces continue to fight in Syria, and President Trump pushes ahead with legally contested actions on immigration and transgender service in the military, the White House has been slow to nominate the top agency lawyers who advise officials on how they can lawfully respond to sensitive international and domestic security issues.

There are no Senate-confirmed lawyers leading the legal departments at the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Homeland Security. Under the Obama administration, these lawyers advised the president on the lawfulness of killing Osama bin Laden, helped craft policies to protect undocumented immigrants, and provided legal justification for Obama’s use of drone strikes.

The relationship between politically-appointed lawyers and senior officials “can’t be replicated by the career staff,” said Brian Egan, who served as State Department Legal Adviser during Obama’s final year in office.

“It could make a difference in anything from ... the political leadership having more comfort in having the political general counsel in a very difficult or sensitive meeting, to a general counsel’s ability to deliver difficult advice with the trust of the political leadership, to the general counsel having a little bit more leeway to push on the career staff on an issue where the there may be a policy desire to take an initiative that raises legal questions,” Egan said.

The White House has yet to announce nominees for general counsel at the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A Defense Department pick, John Sullivan, was announced in March, but was never submitted to the Senate and ended up in a senior position at the State Department. Trump announced a nominee for Homeland Security general counsel in April, John Mitnick, but the Senate did not receive that nomination until early August. The White House just announced a nominee for State Department Legal Adviser, Jennifer Newstead, on Sept. 1.

By this time in 2009, the Obama administration had lawyers confirmed in all four of these posts. The Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of Intelligence didn’t exist when President George W. Bush took office in 2001, but he had lawyers confirmed at the Defense Department and the State Department by mid-May.

The top agency lawyers advise administration official on what is lawful and what actions might trigger lawsuits, and they hash out questions of international law with their foreign government counterparts. In the weeks leading up to the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, for instance, the New York Times reported that four lawyers — including the Defense Department general counsel — were asked to secretly grapple with the legal questions raised by the operation, including whether the United States had to alert Pakistani officials in advance, the circumstances under which bin Laden could be killed, and whether he could be buried at sea.