President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated Jay Clayton, the top U.S. attorney for Manhattan, to be the next U.S. spy chief, amid a political firestorm over a fierce loyalist Trump had picked to fill the role temporarily.
The decision, however, appeared unlikely to end a refusal by Democrats to provide the votes needed to renew a key foreign surveillance program that expires on Friday unless Trump withdraws Bill Pulte as acting intelligence chief. Pulte is loyal to Trump but has no national security experience.
“Pulte has to go. He cannot be in the DNI role. Our national security is too important,” U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the chamber’s Democratic leader, told reporters, using the acronym for the director of national intelligence.
Trump announced his choice for permanent DNI in a Truth Social post in which he urged quick Senate confirmation of Clayton to replace Tulsi Gabbard as overseer of the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.
The White House later sent his formal nomination to the Senate and the Senate intelligence committee set Clayton’s confirmation hearing for next Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters, Trump stressed that Pulte would not remain in the interim position for long.
“He’s only there for a little while, he’s running it for a short while, while we get a very talented person, Jay Clayton,” Trump said.
Pulte would remain Federal Housing Finance Agency director while serving as acting DNI. Democrats have called for him to undergo a full security review before he can access classified materials, saying he lacked a clearance when Trump announced his appointment.
Clayton is a former lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell who specialized in mergers and capital raising. During Trump’s first term, he served as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he developed a reputation as a political moderate who sought consensus with the Democratic commissioners.
Trump in April 2025 nominated Clayton as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, considered one of the most powerful prosecutorial posts in the country.
His official biography shows that he has no intelligence background and lacks extensive national security experience, a requirement of the law that created the post of DNI after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
Reporters reported in November 2024 that Clayton, during talks on joining the incoming Trump administration, expressed an interest in running the CIA. He will remain Manhattan U.S. attorney until he is confirmed, a Justice Department spokesperson said.
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A person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters, said that CIA Director John Ratcliffe recommended Clayton to Trump as Gabbard’s permanent replacement after the president asked him who should take over from her.
Until Clayton is confirmed, Pulte will lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and oversee personnel cuts that Trump has called for, the person said.
Many lawmakers greeted Trump’s announcement with praise for Clayton. But top Democrats said they would continue withholding the votes needed to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act unless Trump withdrew Pulte as acting DNI.
“Before the Senate can take up a FISA extension there needs to be a clear guarantee that Mr. Pulte will not serve as acting DNI,” said Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee from Virginia, who called Clayton “a capable public servant.”
Senate Republicans have a 53-47 seat majority and need support from at least seven Democrats to meet the 60-vote threshold for passing the legislation.
Democrats and some Republicans have expressed concerns that Pulte could “weaponize” top-secret intelligence to attack Trump’s perceived political foes. They cited Pulte’s earlier use of confidential mortgage data to push fraud probes against New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff and others. None of the probes have resulted in criminal charges.
Democrats also worry that Pulte could use the DNI post to pursue Trump’s discredited claim that he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden due to fraud. Trump said last week that Pulte “may find out some things about the rigged elections.”
In a CNBC interview this week, Clayton was asked about Republican claims of fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral race. He answered: “We had a deep, deep problem with voting in America.”
Section 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to request without judicial warrants that telecom firms provide texts, emails and cellphone data of foreigners believed located abroad, and store them in a massive database.
Both houses of Congress on Thursday rejected short-term extensions of the program that Trump had requested.
Some Democrats and Republicans oppose Section 702 over what they say are insufficient privacy protections for Americans whose information is inadvertently collected and stored in the database.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco, David Morgan, Luc Cohen, Daphne Psaledakis, Katharine Jackson; )
