WaPo (“Trump intel pick Jay Clayton set to face a tough confirmation hearing“):
Jay Clayton, the Trump administration’s nominee for director of national intelligence, will appear before the Senate, weeks after the president abruptly scuttled his scheduled confirmation hearing.
Clayton’s appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to begin Wednesday morning at 9:30. Bill Pulte, a mortgage agency official and Trump loyalist, has temporarily held the role.
Pulte has no prior national security experience and used his former post atop the Federal Housing Finance Agency to assist mortgage fraud investigations against President Donald Trump’s political enemies. He also helped lead an unsuccessful effort to oust then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell this year.
In his short time as acting DNI, Pulte has fired some intelligence officials and sent others back to their home agencies, acting on Trump’s wishes to further cut the organization.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and coordinates the efforts of the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. The top job, by law, requires national security experience.
Clayton has served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration. Some Democrats have questioned Clayton’s qualifications for the top intelligence position, but many others say they back his nomination.
Still, Clayton’s recent decision to subpoena several journalists from the New York Times for their reporting on Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One plane could complicate their support.
Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), a senior Democrat on the panel, called the subpoenas “not acceptable in a DNI” in a social media post Saturday.
To block Pulte from temporarily taking the role, lawmakers had sought to fast-track Clayton’s hearing in June. Trump abruptly announced on social media that the hearing was canceled, hours before it was set to occur, and called on the Senate to first pass a voting restriction bill.
When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), the committee’s chair, signaled he still intended to hold the hearing, Trump interceded and told Clayton not to appear.
The Senate has not yet passed the voting bill.
NBC News (“Nominee for top intel post faces lawmakers eager to see him replace the current leader“):
President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, is likely to get a friendly reception from lawmakers Wednesday at his confirmation hearing as both parties are eager for him to take over from the current acting intelligence chief.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers see Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as a relatively safe pair of hands to replace Bill Pulte, a political partisan who came to the job without any clear national security experience.
The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold the confirmation hearing amid growing concern among Democrats that Trump and his administration could try to use intelligence or law enforcement agencies to interfere with state governments overseeing midterm elections in November.
A White House task force has collected thousands of pages of documents from intelligence agencies with plans to declassify some of them, providing Trump with a potential opportunity to renew baseless claims about fraud in past elections, NBC News has reported.
Trump is due to deliver remarks Thursday evening that will focus in part on election integrity and his administration’s findings around the 2020 election.
Clayton is expected to face questions from Democrats in particular about how he sees the intelligence director’s role with regard to U.S. elections and whether he would be willing to provide unvarnished assessments to Trump.
He told CNBC last month that the U.S. is “doing an absolutely terrible job” of ensuring the integrity of elections, “and the American people are right to question it.”
Citing California’s election laws allowing registered voters to cast ballots by mail, Clayton claimed that “it makes the opportunity for fraud so much greater, when that is not necessary.”
Election experts and California officials say there is no evidence of widespread fraud in California’s elections, as Trump has asserted. And as for the 2020 election, no evidence has emerged showing widespread fraud, as Trump has claimed. Dozens of lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results were dismissed or dropped.
While I suspect he’ll face some tough questions from a handful of Democrats, I expect he’ll ultimately sail through. He’s certainly more qualified by resume and past record than Tulsi Gabbard, who was confirmed to the post 52-48 on a party-line vote, with the exception of Mitch McConnell’s nay vote.
That’s especially true given that the alternative is Pulte’s continued service in the role. Even if the President adheres to the Vacancy Act, which would be uncharacteristic, and replaces him after 180 days in the role, there’s no short supply of hacks in Senate-confirmed posts.
Which, of course, is exactly what the Framers had in mind when they designed this process.
