Trump abruptly halts confirmation process for Jay Clayton as US intelligence chief

Donald Trump abruptly halted the confirmation process for Jay Clayton as the US’s top intelligence chief early Wednesday, in a move that will allow Trump’s controversial selection for acting director of national security, Bill Pulte, to assume the role and remain in place for at least several weeks until Clayton is confirmed.Trump pushed the Senate to confirm Clayton after his appointment of Pulte as acting director sparked bipartisan pushback and stalled his administration’s push for renewal of the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).Democrats and some Republicans have decried Pulte’s nomination, saying that his background as the chair of a federal mortgage regulation agency is insufficient to lead America’s intelligence community.In a surprising post on Truth Social in the early morning hours Wednesday, Trump declared “we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI Today”. The president does not technically have the power to cancel a Senate hearing, though it appears Clayton will not appear.Trump said that Republicans had rushed the Clayton nomination so quickly that “Pulte would be gone before the Dumocrats would vote on Fisa”, using his common derogatory term for Democrats.He also said he wanted to see Clayton’s replacement as US attorney completed before Clayton became the director of national intelligence, and further complicated the situation by asserting he did not want the surveillance act approved unless it included the Save America Act, a controversial and restrictive voting bill.Tulsi Gabbard resigned late last month as director of national intelligence, which oversees 18 US spy agencies. Pulte could become acting director as soon as this week.Like Pulte and Gabbard, Clayton has thin credentials for America’s top intelligence job. He served as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first term, and made millions working as a Wall Street attorney in the decades prior to his 2017 SEC post.But like Trump’s other appointees, Clayton has also demonstrated unwavering support for Trump and his agenda – including his conspiracies of election fraud.On CNBC on 8 June, during a conversation about allegations of fraud in the California elections, Clayton said of election integrity: “We’re doing an absolutely terrible job, and the American people are right to question it.” Trump has called the elections “rigged”, while presenting no evidence to support the allegations.He also said California’s mail-voting laws, which include sending mail ballots to all voters and a grace period for ballots to arrive after election day, created an “opportunity for fraud”.If eventually confirmed, Clayton could continue Gabbard’s unprecedented efforts to investigate cases of election interference that could account for Trump’s 2020 loss. During her tenure as DNI, Gabbard inexplicably appeared at an FBI raid on an election facility in Fulton county, Georgia, and authorized the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico that conspiracists have alleged to be rigged by Venezuela’s previous president, Nicolás Maduro, and his deceased predecessor, Hugo Chávez. (Clayton signed off on the indictment against Maduro.)Many Democrats and Republicans have praised Clayton’s nomination. Jim Himes, the Democratic ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said that Clayton’s “temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI”. Republican Thom Tillis called Clayton an “outstanding choice”.Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has said that the only “path out” to extending section 207, the surveillance act, would be to have Gabbard, or her deputy Aaron Lukas, step in to guide the agency until a permanent chief is confirmed.