WASHINGTON —President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated Jay Clayton to be his next director of national intelligence, replacing his earlier controversial choice, Bill Pulte.
Clayton is currently the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and was chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”
The selection of Clayton comes amid a firestorm over Trump’s earlier decision to make top housing official Pulte the acting national intelligence chief following the planned departure of Tulsi Gabbard.
The elevation of Pulte, who has no demonstrated national security background, prompted pushback from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers and has endangered the renewal of critical government surveillance powers.
Since Pulte’s selection, Republican lawmakers had urged Trump to quickly name a more qualified permanent nominee.
But Trump’s announcement is unlikely to save the key spy powers authority from its Friday expiration, as Democrats remained largely unmoved following the president’s Truth Social post. Pulte, they said, would still need to be replaced as the acting spy chief to earn their votes in support of a FISA extension.
The White House posted the transmission of Clayton’s nomination to the Senate a little after 5 p.m. Trump said Thursday that he still plans to install Pulte as the acting director.
“He’s only there for a little while, he’s running it for a short while,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.
Plus, the House has already left town after failing to pass a short-term extension, all but guaranteeing that the authority for the spy powers program will expire.
“Why did the president wait till after the House went home? Pulte has got to go. Period,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters shortly Trump’s announcement on Clayton.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters: “I don’t think the president wants this approved. Why wouldn’t he have nominated him yesterday? The House is out of session.”
Speaker Mike Johnson has since suggested he won’t call the House back to Washington to address the program during next week’s prescheduled recess, accusing Democrats of holding it hostage.
Pulte — a wealthy businessman who was confirmed as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency last year — has been a Trump loyalist with a record of going after many of the president’s biggest perceived political enemies through criminal referrals.
The president indicated to Johnson earlier this week that he wouldn’t back down away from Pulte, despite threats from Democrats to let the key surveillance power lapse over the appointment, two sources briefed on the meeting told CNN.
Trump told some advisers he didn’t want to be held hostage by Democrats and indicated that he believed Republicans could work around them to get a FISA extension.
The president stunned intelligence staffers and lawmakers on Tuesday by announcing Pulte would start his role as acting DNI on June 19 — before Gabbard’s anticipated departure on June 30.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe suggested Clayton for the top position, a source familiar with the decision said.
Trump was looking for someone that was an outsider in the intelligence world as he has sought to shrink the Office of the Director of National intelligence and root out what he sees as the “deep state.”
His nomination of Clayton comes after Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor has appeared on CNBC in recent weeks defending Trump’s settlement with the IRS and stoking the administration’s claims of election fraud in California.
On Monday, he was grilled about the distinction between state laws that make California’s vote tabulation a slow process and actual evidence of fraud, saying, “There’s a great phrase, ‘opportunity for fraud.’”
Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office, said, “Jay Clayton will remain US Attorney through confirmation.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled a confirmation hearing for Clayton on June 17.
Source: Saudi Gazette