President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is nominating Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to be his director of national intelligence. The move comes weeks after former intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said she is stepping down from the role.
Trump, in announcing the decision on Truth Social, wrote that “few people anywhere” in the legal community have as much respect as Clayton, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whom the president also described as “highly respected.”
“I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” he wrote in the post.
Last month, Gabbard announced she was stepping down as the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) because her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte was named by Trump to serve as acting director in a move that drew pushback from Democratic and some Republican lawmakers.
Last week, the president told the Wall Street Journal that he would encourage Pulte to downsize parts of the intelligence office, which oversees 18 federal agencies and units.
“You’re less shackled,” he said. “It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time.”
Going further, Trump suggested that the ODNI could even be “terminated” in its entirety, noting that a similar downsizing process was undertaken at the Department of Education. “We’ve made the Department of Education much smaller, and likewise, this should be much smaller,” he added.
Trump praised Pulte as a “very smart guy” while speaking to reporters last week and added that he “may find out some things about the rigged elections.”
The decision to name Pulte as acting director, however, prompted Democratic opposition to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in a vote earlier this week.
Some Republican senators, meanwhile, indicated they would not have voted to appoint Pulte if Trump nominated him.
“The Senate doesn’t have any role to play in terms of confirming acting officials, but I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Hill about Pulte.
Clayton had served as head of the SEC from May 2017 until December 2020. He also served as the head of the prominent law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the largest in the world.