Jeohn Salone Favors

Jeohn Salone Favors is an attorney and former senior U.S. government official who served as the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Counterterrorism, Threat Prevention, and Law Enforcement Policy in the Biden-Harris administration. His earlier roles in government include service as a CIA operations officer, American diplomat, White House staffer, and Justice Department official. In private practice, Mr. Favors practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he litigated criminal and civil matters, conducted complex internal investigations, and advised a wide range of clients on emerging technology, compliance, crisis management, strategy, and governance issues.

At the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Favors served as the senior executive responsible for national policy and programs spanning counterterrorism, counternarcotics, counter-drone and unmanned aircraft systems, global transportation security, transnational organized crime, human trafficking, and child sexual exploitation and abuse. In addition, Mr. Favors helmed DHS’s planning for major events like the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and oversaw Department-wide law enforcement policy for the 80,000+ officers and agents serving across the homeland security enterprise — the largest law enforcement entity in the federal government.

Prior to joining DHS, Mr. Favors served in the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security. At DOJ, Mr. Favors served on the Division’s senior management team and led interagency efforts to obtain custody of high-profile targets, including the Libyan intelligence officer charged with building the bomb used in the 1988 attack on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and a cell of Iranian proxies involved in assassination plotting on U.S. soil. Earlier in his career, Mr. Favors served as a counterterrorism-focused CIA operations officer, who embedded with U.S. special operations forces in war zones to disrupt terrorist plots against the homeland. As a National Security Council staffer in the Obama White House, Mr. Favors helped orchestrate early, backchannel contacts and diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Iran, which culminated ultimately in the Iran nuclear deal.

A native of rural South Louisiana, Mr. Favors began his career in public service as a volunteer firefighter-EMT who responded to New Orleans and helped rescue hundreds of disaster victims from catastrophic flooding in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Favors holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.