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Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump is still set on getting his unqualified pick for director of national intelligence.
What’s happening? Last week, Trump nominated Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his permanent director of national intelligence. The Clayton pick was a relief for senators concerned about Trump’s previous pick for acting DNI, Bill Pulte, who is set to take over on Friday. The Senate was set to move quickly on Clayton’s nomination in order to beat the clock.
But on Wednesday, Trump threw a wrench in the works by essentially canceling Clayton’s confirmation hearing scheduled for this afternoon — all but ensuring Pulte will get his chance to take over the 18 agencies that make up the US intelligence community on Friday.
Why Pulte? Pulte, the current director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (a title he will keep while serving as acting DNI, according to Trump) has no national security experience and seemingly no affirmative qualifications to oversee America’s spy agencies.
What he does have is a bottomless willingness to go after Trump’s enemies using the powers of his office. At FHFA, that looked like unsubstantiated mortgage fraud allegations; with the US intelligence apparatus at his fingertips, it could be something much more serious.
Pulte is also likely to make deep staffing cuts to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence while leading the agency, and Trump has indicated Pulte will use his role to investigate “rigged elections” (as his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, has done).
What else do I need to know? Also tangled in this is FISA, a major foreign surveillance program currently up for reauthorization.
It lapsed last week over bipartisan concern about Pulte, and Trump’s Clayton nomination was an attempt to smooth its passage through Congress. But now Trump has jeopardized the surveillance program too by demanding lawmakers package it with a national voter ID bill that the Senate has already rejected. (In a post, Trump referred to this demand as adding “a slight bit of intrigue.”)
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
