U.S. President Donald Trump named Douglas Fears as is new homeland security advisor on Friday. Photo by Olivier Douliery/UPI | License Photo

June 2 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump has named Rear Admiral Douglas Fears as his new homeland security advisor.

Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton announced on Friday that Fears would take the spot, a White House release said.


Fears previously served as the special assistant to the president and senior director for resilience policy at the National Security Council, the release said.

He is an alumnus of U.S. Coast Guard Academy, the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard University.

"Fears brings more than three decades of experience across a range of vital homeland security areas including counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and disaster response to the NSC," Bolton said in the release.

Fears replaces Tom Bossert, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration, who left the position in April.

Bossert was supportive of several of Trump's controversial stances. He defended Trump's comments equating white nationalists to counter-protesters after a violent rally last year in Charlottesville, Va., and said Russian meddling in the 2016 election didn't influence any voter in the U.S.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not give a reason for Bossert's departure.