‘I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,’ the president said Thursday.
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.
Pulte will serve as the acting U.S. intelligence chief and would take over from Gabbard later in June, Trump said on Tuesday.
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.
“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said on June 5, adding that Pulte has broader latitude to make significant changes due to his being the acting head of the ODNI.
“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.
