Senate confirms Jay Clayton as new director of intelligence

WASHINGTON — The Senate approved President Donald Trump’s choice to oversee the country’s spy agencies, with the Republican majority voting Tuesday to install top federal prosecutor Jay Clayton as the next director of national intelligence.

Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, will inherit a much smaller agency after his predecessors cut the office’s workforce in a series of firings in recent weeks and months. And his confirmation follows accusations from Democratic lawmakers and former national security officials that the Trump White House has tried to use the intelligence agencies to wage partisan political warfare.

After Clayton was confirmed, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Intelligence Committee’s vice chairman, explained why he voted against the nomination in a statement and expressed hope that Clayton would not cave to possible political pressure from the White House.

“Having known and worked with Jay for years, I was encouraged when he was first nominated for the position of DNI,” Warner said. “Unfortunately, I came away from his confirmation process with serious reservations about whether he would be willing to stand up to political pressure when it matters most.”

The Republican leader of the Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, welcomed the vote in favor of Clayton.

“Jay Clayton is a highly qualified nominee with a deep experience combatting a wide range of national security threats,” Cotton said in a statement. “As U.S. attorney, Mr. Clayton has worked hand in glove with our intelligence agencies and counterterrorism personnel to lock up criminals who threaten our national security.”

Hours earlier, the acting intelligence chief, Bill Pulte, announced on social media what he called a fifth round of job cuts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence since he took office in June. But he did not say how many positions were cut or how many employees were fired or merely reassigned to other intelligence agencies.

Pulte described the move as “an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago.”

The National Intelligence Director’s Office had roughly 2,000 employees at the start of Trump’s second term last year, and his first director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard , had proposed cuts in the workforce of about 40%. The 30% reduction Pulte cited could put the current workforce at about 1,000, former officials said.

The National Intelligence Director’s Office and the White House declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Warner said Pulte has failed to share with lawmakers information about workforce reductions or a rationale for the cuts.

“The Acting DNI has been quick to announce firings and make public claims about them, but has so far declined to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with the information necessary to assess the accuracy of those statements or the basis for those decisions,” said Rachel Cohen, Warner’s communications director.

Congress created the national intelligence director’s position in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of ensuring that information was shared across the country’s spy agencies.

But Trump and some Republican lawmakers have called for scaling back the office, which they say has become a bloated bureaucracy.

Clayton enjoys stronger support among Republican lawmakers than Pulte, a Trump loyalist who came to the job without relevant national security experience.

At his confirmation hearing this month, Clayton refused to say who won the 2020 election, sidestepping questions that could put him at odds with Trump. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won, was rigged.

Democrats on the Intelligence Committee said Clayton’s answers raised doubts about whether he would provide accurate information to Trump if it was out of line with his views or whether he would protect spy agencies from possible political manipulation.

Trump picked Pulte to succeed Gabbard after she said she was resigning because of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

Pulte won Trump’s approval as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he launched investigations into Trump’s perceived political enemies.