Trump picks Jay Clayton for director of national intelligence after uproar over Pulte
Clayton is the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday a permanent pick to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, after the uproar over his temporary pick risked derailing the renewal of a key surveillance law.
Trump said that he is nominating the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to head the intelligence agency.
"I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible," Trump wrote in a social media post.
Trump's announcement comes after both the House and Senate earlier Thursday failed to pass extensions of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire at the end of the day Friday.
The reauthorization of the spy program was muddied by Trump's choice of Bill Pulte to serve as acting director after Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation. Pulte drew bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill over his lack of previous experience in national security and intelligence.
ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump on Thursday about Pulte continuing to serve as acting director given his lack of intelligence experience.
"He's only there for a little while. He's running it for a short while we get a very talented person, Jay Clayton, in," Trump said in the Oval Office.
Apart from the national security cases he oversaw while serving as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton also lacks experience in intelligence gathering and national security matters.
Clayton spent the bulk of his career as a corporate attorney, and prior to his appointment as U.S. attorney last year, lacked meaningful experience in criminal matters.
He has spent the last year overseeing one of the country's highest profile federal prosecutor's offices -- focusing on drugs, gangs, immigration and fraud cases -- and was also tapped to lead an investigation that Trump directly called for into high-profile Democrats such Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman's alleged associations with Epstein. Nothing appears to have resulted from that investigation, and earlier this year acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department did not have any active cases into Epstein associates.
Clayton also oversaw the unsealing of grand jury materials related to Epstein, prompting complaints from victims about the disclosure of their sensitive personal information. The Justice Department's push to unseal those materials resulted in little new information about the investigations into Epstein and was criticized by judges as a largely performative effort while the DOJ refused to release their own materials.
Clayton's office has brought the first two prosecutions of insider trading on prediction markets, including cases against a special forces soldier and Google employee, putting his office at the center of the debate about how to govern the sites that critics say are rife with insider trading.
Clayton was never confirmed by the Senate as U.S. attorney, though his nomination was approved by the federal judges in the district and was seen by many as a steady hand to lead the high-profile office. He was, however, the subject of criticism earlier this week when he appeared on CNBC and opined about baseless claims of election fraud in California.
"There's a great phrase, 'opportunity for fraud,'" Clayton said, criticizing the state's mail-in voting laws.
Clayton spent most of his career at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, where he represented hedge funds, wealthy investors, large banks and massive corporations such as Deutsche Bank, UBS and Alibaba Group. Clayton represented Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis and Barclays when it purchased Lehman Brothers' assets out of bankruptcy.
During Trump's first administration, Clayton led the SEC, cracking down on cryptocurrencies and winning $14 billion in monetary remedies, including returning $3.5 billion to investors. While he championed the "long-term interests of the Main Street investor," Clayton also pushed deregulations -- such as removing the requirement that hedge funds publish stock positions and loosening the rules for corporate auditors -- that critics said weakened investor protections.
While Clayton generally avoided the political spotlight while at the SEC, a June 2020 proposal to nominate Clayton to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York briefly resulted in political turmoil. The sitting U.S. attorney, Geoffrey Berman, refused to leave his post after then-Attorney General Bill Barr announced he would be replaced by Clayton. The standoff was resolved with Berman's deputy taking over the position, and Clayton continued to lead the SEC.
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