Clayton is confirmed, putting likely end to holdup in reauthorizing FISA Section 702’s spying powers
Walter Joseph "Jay" Clayton was confirmed by the Senate to be Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence (DNI), ending a stalemate affecting the reauthorization of key spying legislation.
Clayton’s nomination sailed through the chamber on Tuesday after clearing a procedural vote just a day earlier, teeing him up to be sworn in within days. His takeover of the DNI office (ODNI) will herald the ouster of Bill Pulte, Trump’s pick to lead the agency during its transition period and a figure whose selection triggered a Democratic revolt on Capitol Hill. The final vote was 51-47, with zero defections on either side.
The acting DNI, Pulte, previously led Trump’s efforts to punish his enemies at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His total lack of background in national security or intelligence led to Democrats opposing his permanent appointment and vowing to keep the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s valuable Section 702 powers in the dark while Pulte remains in the role.
Plans for the renewal of that legislation aren’t immediately clear. The Senate has only days left in session before it will go to recess for most of the month of August, as senators return to their home states and in some cases begin the task of jump-starting their re-election campaigns. Before then, the chamber is due to take up several other priorities, including legislation to avert a government shutdown in September.
Clayton’s nomination was expected to pass easily as he was recommended by some GOP senators to be Trump’s pick for acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York last year, a role which saw him prosecuting terror suspects among others. He was not expected to pick up much, if any, Democratic support however, due to his refusal to state outright that Donald Trump was duly defeated in the 2020 presidential election during questioning from Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing.
A topic relatively unrelated to his job, the question of the 2020 election’s actual result has become somewhat of a litmus test Democrats have imposed upon Trump’s nominees and appointed officials as they come before Congress for questioning, in part because lawmakers in the party feel that it is an easy way of exposing whether a given official can stomach departing from the president on a matter around which Trump is known to seek recriminations.
Republican senators are also nearly as eager as Democrats to see Pulte removed from his role, though they have condemned their counterparts for holding FISA’s valuable spying powers on the line. Section 702, which remains up for reauthorization, allows the government to gather electronic records of persons living overseas. Three GOP senators voted against allowing Pulte to serve in his current role as acting DNI, and others, including former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, suggested that he wouldn’t survive a full confirmation vote.
The Democrats’ refusal to back Section 702’s reauthorization over Pulte’s appointment initially resulted in Trump pulling Clayton’s nomination in anger, but pressure from those Republican senators forced the White House to give in.
The ODNI under Pulte has undergone waves of layoffs as the Trump loyalist still in charge has instituted purges of career intelligence officials and others he perceives to be aligned with an anti-Trump “Deep State” working within the government.
Previously, under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, it became an area of controversy and confusion as the president publicly contradicted Gabbard, who was in charge of his intelligence briefings, on the danger supposedly presented by the Iranian nuclear program. Gabbard resigned in May.
A former Democratic congresswoman who underwent a MAGA evolution, Gabbard was largely sidelined from her role and rarely commented on foreign policy matters after her public snub by the president. In January, she stunned many when she personally oversaw an FBI raid of Fulton County’s election offices — the jurisdiction was one where Trump attempted to lean on local officials to change the results of the 2020 election, and where a local district attorney sought his criminal prosecution after the election.
That FBI raid of the Georgia election offices never amounted to any form of serious investigation, and the Trump administration has still declined to go as far as issuing actual charges against anyone the president has accused of illegal activity as it relates to the 2020 election.
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