President Donald Trump is pushing ahead with his plan to install Bill Pulte, a political loyalist with no national security experience, as acting director of national intelligence, a move that has drawn bipartisan criticism and threatens the reauthorization of a key surveillance law set to expire at the end of this week.
Trump announced Tuesday evening on social media that Pulte was already working with outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and would take her place on June 19, while remaining head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Gabbard, a former congresswoman who served in the military and on a House subcommittee with oversight of military intelligence, announced in her resignation letter that she would step down on June 30. Trump offered no explanation for Pulte taking over before that date.
The president earlier in the day met with House Speaker Mike Johnson to discuss Pulte’s elevation, according to a report from The Guardian. Trump has suggested in public comments that he expects his political ally to investigate elections that he has falsely claimed were “rigged” once installed as the country’s top intelligence officer.
While Trump has insisted Pulte would serve only for a “short period,” many Senate Republicans are urging the White House to name a full-time nominee who can be confirmed by the Senate. Elevating Pulte on an acting basis avoids a contentious confirmation process.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday that if Trump installs Pulte, Democrats will not allow the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is due to expire June 12. The powerful surveillance tool allows the government to collect foreign communications passing through U.S. servers or involving U.S. contacts, and its use has been controversial. The FBI was discovered in 2020 using Section 702 to investigate whether Black Lives Matter protesters had ties to terrorists, according to a declassified memo released in 2023 by the office of the director of national intelligence.
“Bill Pulte is deeply unqualified to serve as acting director of national intelligence and is deeply dangerous,” Jeffries told PBS NewsHour. “He’s got no national security experience, no military experience and no law-enforcement experience. In fact, the statute explicitly requires that any person occupying this position of great sensitivity have national security experience in their professional background. Bill Pulte has zero of that.”
Jeffries, who could become House speaker next year, added that Pulte “has clearly demonstrated a willingness to weaponize the federal government against Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries.” He said that “under no circumstances should we trust the privacy interests or national security interests of the American people with Bill Pulte on top of Donald Trump and Kash Patel.”
As head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte used his access to private financial information to accuse public officials Trump dislikes of mortgage fraud, including Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve board member nominated by President Joe Biden. The case against James was dismissed, and the referrals against Schiff and Cook have yielded no criminal charges.
“Donald Trump needs to withdraw his decision to elevate Bill Pulte,” Jeffries said. “That’s a starting point, not an ending point, and then we can see if we can responsibly get to a place where there are enough reforms built into the law to provide guardrails and protect the American people.”