The Senate on Tuesday night confirmed Jay Clayton to serve as President Donald Trump’s second permanent national intelligence director, replacing an acting chief whose leadership alarmed Democrats and disrupted efforts to renew a major foreign surveillance program.
Clayton was confirmed in a 51-47 vote. He will oversee the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser.
His confirmation ends Bill Pulte’s roughly six-week tenure as acting director, during which the Trump loyalist presided over repeated personnel cuts and faced accusations that he was politicizing the intelligence community. Pulte said Tuesday that ODNI had completed a fifth round of cuts without disclosing details of who was affected.
Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, served as a Securities and Exchange Commission chairman during Trump’s first term. His nomination was initially viewed by some Democrats as a stabilizing alternative to Pulte. Democrats had pushed the White House to nominate a permanent intelligence director and agreed with Senate Republicans to move Clayton’s confirmation process quickly, hoping to curtail Pulte’s time in the role.
But Clayton shed much of that prospective support during his confirmation hearing this month, when he repeatedly declined to say directly that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The Senate Intelligence Committee advanced Clayton’s nomination last week in a 9-8 party-line vote, with every Democrat and Democratic-aligned independent on the panel opposing him.
Clayton also faced scrutiny over subpoenas his office issued to New York Times journalists in an effort to identify the sources behind reporting on security shortcomings of Trump’s new, Qatari-donated Air Force One.
During his July 15 hearing, Clayton defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation and said he was comfortable that prosecutors had followed the proper process. The department withdrew the subpoenas days later, however, after a federal judge sharply questioned government attorneys about how they had obtained reporters’ phone records and whether they had complied with legal safeguards intended to protect journalists.
Clayton also signaled that he wants the intelligence community to devote more attention to the connections between economic competition and national security, an emphasis informed by his time overseeing U.S. financial markets.
“National security and economic security are synonymous,” Clayton told lawmakers. Understanding the economic consequences of major events and their broader effects, he added, should be a larger part of what the intelligence community provides policymakers.
His arrival could also revive negotiations over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect the electronic communications of non-U.S. citizens located abroad without a warrant.
The authority statutorily lapsed in June after Democrats joined other lawmakers in blocking a largely unchanged renewal package, citing Pulte’s installation as acting intelligence director. Democrats had argued that they would reconsider an extension once the Senate confirmed a permanent official to lead the intelligence community.
Intelligence collection under Section 702 has continued despite the expiration, with providers still complying with government requests to furnish communications for spy agencies, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told Nextgov/FCW last week, but he added that, at any moment, “they can decide to challenge the validity of the request” and he is “very concerned” by that possibility.
Asked whether a Clayton confirmation would help get votes necessary to legislatively reauthorize Section 702, Himes said, “I think that certainly helps.”
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