Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director with no intelligence background, took the reins Friday as acting director of national intelligence after a bitter Washington standoff in which President Donald Trump blocked a Senate confirmation hearing for his own permanent nominee to prevent lawmakers from keeping Pulte out of the role.
Trump announced on Truth Social on May 22 that he was nominating Pulte to serve as acting director after Tulsi Gabbard tendered her resignation, with her last day initially set for June 30. Acting heads of government agencies fill roles on a temporary basis and do not require Senate confirmation. Trump later shortened Gabbard’s tenure to June 19, meaning Pulte would take over in only 10 days.
The announcement triggered swift bipartisan criticism. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said at the time that Pulte had “demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution.”
“Elevating him to oversee the intelligence community makes clear that this president is not looking for an intelligence leader who will follow the facts or speak truth to power, but rather someone who will be willing to shape intelligence around the president’s wishes, regardless of the cost to the American people,” Warner said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that “we don’t need a weaponized” national intelligence director and said Pulte would have “a lengthy road ahead of him” if he were nominated for the post on a permanent basis.
Trump responded to the pushback by announcing he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, as permanent DNI director. Clayton has no experience in any of the 18 agencies under the DNI’s purview, but the Senate intelligence committee quickly scheduled confirmation hearings for June 17, hoping a vote could occur before the June 19 handover and prevent Pulte from ever serving.
The accelerated timeline failed. In a Truth Social post sent from France at 3:54 a.m. Washington time on June 17, hours before the planned hearing, Trump wrote that “Regarding the approval of our Great Patriot, Jay Clayton, we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today.” The president cited several factors, including Democrats’ alleged gamesmanship over a surveillance law extension and his purported desire to have a new U.S. attorney replace Clayton. The practical effect was that, with only two days until Gabbard’s departure, Pulte would become America’s spy chief.
MSI previously reported that Trump’s move to cancel Clayton’s hearing blocked a bipartisan effort to confirm a permanent director and signaled the president’s willingness to sidestep congressional process. Read more.
The standoff over Pulte also scrambled the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some Republicans in Congress attempted to pass a short-term, two-week extension of the law, but their efforts failed and the law granting the executive branch broad surveillance powers lapsed on June 12 amid the dispute over Pulte potentially serving even temporarily.
Pulte, whom the Wall Street Journal reported last year has been called “Little Trump” by some administration insiders for his devotion to the president, has a record of using his government authority to investigate Trump’s political adversaries. Last year, Pulte referred several prominent Democratic Trump antagonists — including Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Sen. Adam Schiff — for prosecution for mortgage fraud. The allegations were widely seen as weak. In December, the Government Accountability Office opened an investigation into whether Pulte improperly accessed the financial information of Trump’s opponents.
As DNI, Pulte could advance Trump’s long-running claims about election fraud. “He’s a very smart guy,” Trump said shortly after nominating him, “and you may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc, etc.”
With Clayton’s nomination in limbo, Pulte now oversees the nation’s 18 spy agencies as well as the Federal Housing Finance Agency, an unconventional dual-role arrangement. No timeline has been set for Clayton’s confirmation process to resume.