THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING AMERICA'S SPY AGENCIES HAD ZERO INTELLIGENCE EXPERIENCE — AND HE JUST FINISHED HIS FOURTH ROUND OF LAYOFFS
THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING AMERICA'S SPY AGENCIES HAD ZERO INTELLIGENCE EXPERIENCE — AND HE JUST FINISHED HIS FOURTH ROUND OF LAYOFFS
Before Jay Clayton, there was Bill Pulte. And if you've never heard that name, that's part of the problem.
When former DNI Tulsi Gabbard resigned in May 2026 — walking away from the nation's top intelligence post after a controversial tenure that included clashes with career intelligence officials and questions about her own past contacts with foreign governments — Trump didn't reach for someone with decades of intelligence experience to steady the ship. He didn't tap a former CIA director or a retired four-star general or a career intelligence analyst who'd spent thirty years earning the security clearances needed to handle the nation's most sensitive secrets.
He picked Bill Pulte. The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. A man whose professional background was in housing regulation and mortgage policy. A man with, according to every public account, zero experience in intelligence, counterterrorism, espionage, or any of the other disciplines that the Director of National Intelligence is supposed to oversee.
Pulte's appointment drew immediate bipartisan fury. Republicans and Democrats alike questioned why a housing regulator was being placed in charge of 18 intelligence agencies during what the administration itself had described as a "heightened threat environment" — with the Iran war grinding on, Chinese cyber operations expanding, Russian information warfare intensifying, and North Korea's missile program continuing to advance.
But Pulte didn't just keep the seat warm. He got to work. And by "work," the intelligence community means something very specific: layoffs.
Over the weekend before Clayton's confirmation vote, Pulte announced that he had completed the fourth round of mass layoffs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Four rounds. In a matter of weeks. Career intelligence professionals — analysts, linguists, counterterrorism specialists, cybersecurity experts — dismissed from their positions by a housing regulator who had been given temporary authority over the nation's secrets by a president who appeared to be in no hurry to replace him.
That last detail matters more than it seems. Trump had announced Clayton as his DNI nominee back in June. Clayton was widely seen as a relatively non-controversial pick — a former SEC chairman with bipartisan respect, someone both parties could confirm quickly. Senate leaders tried to fast-track his approval. A hearing was scheduled.
Then Trump told Clayton not to show up.
The president personally instructed his own nominee to skip his own confirmation hearing, delaying the process by weeks — weeks during which Pulte continued to run the intelligence community, continued to fire career officials, and continued to operate without the Senate oversight that a confirmed director would have been subject to.
Why? The administration hasn't provided a clear answer. But the effect was unmistakable: by delaying Clayton's confirmation, Trump extended Pulte's unsupervised authority over the intelligence agencies during a critical period — a period that included the president's primetime address on election security, during which he released classified documents from the Oval Office to support his ongoing false claims about the 2020 election.
Classified documents. Released by a president. From the Oval Office. On live television. While the nation's intelligence agencies were being run by a housing regulator executing his fourth round of layoffs.
That is the context in which Jay Clayton was finally confirmed on Tuesday night. Not a normal confirmation. Not a routine transfer of authority. A rescue mission — an attempt to install a permanent, Senate-confirmed director before the damage done by Pulte's tenure became irreversible.
Democrats acknowledged as much privately. Several told reporters they had genuinely wanted to support Clayton — a qualified nominee by any traditional standard. But Clayton's refusal to acknowledge the 2020 election result made it impossible. In an intelligence community already reeling from political interference, confirming a director who couldn't distinguish between fact and political convenience felt, to Democrats, like endorsing the very problem Clayton was supposed to fix.
The vote was 51-47. Straight party line. No crossovers. And the procedural vote the night before — the one that cleared the path for the final confirmation — was 51-43, an eight-vote margin that reflected not bipartisan consensus but bipartisan absence, with several senators not even bothering to show up.
And now the question shifts from who runs the intelligence community to what they'll do with it. Because the FISA reauthorization — the legal framework that gives the government its most powerful surveillance tool — has been sitting in limbo waiting for exactly this confirmation. And what happens next could determine how much of your private life the government is allowed to collect, store, and search without a warrant.
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