Clayton heads DOJ's Manhattan office and is a former SEC chair. His nomination comes after blowback to Trump's acting director choice Bill PulteShow Caption
WASHINGTON – Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s new pick to become the nation’s top intelligence official, has a long resume in business law, but little known experience in the spy world.Trump announced June 11 that he will nominate Clayton, 59, for the position of director of national intelligence, which requires Senate confirmation.“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump announced on his Truth Social media platform. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”If confirmed, Clayton would succeed Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's first director of national intelligence who resigned in May to spend more time with her husband after his cancer diagnosis.Trump's choice for acting director of national intelligence, housing regulator Bill Pulte, has drawn bipartisan opposition due to his lack of relevant experience. Pulte, who starts June 19, will serve until Clayton's confirmation. Rep. Jim Himes, of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House committee overseeing the intelligence community, said June 11 that he's "known and respected Jay Clayton for decades. His intelligence, temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI."A longtime Trump ally, Clayton now serves as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or SDNY.Based in Manhattan, Clayton oversees the largest and most prestigious field office of the Justice Department. Its more than 220 federal prosecutors handle a broad range of issues, including gun violence, gang activity, drug trafficking and white collar crime, along with foreign corruption, cyberattacks and cyber-enabled fraud and international money laundering.Like Gabbard, Clayton appears to support Trump's claims that U.S. elections can easily be rigged against Republicans, especially through the use of mail-in ballots, which can help enable people with disabilities and others who can't make it to the polls on Election Day to vote.In a June 8 interview with CNBC, when asked about Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in California, Clayton echoed the president's concerns."On the (election) integrity side, we're doing an absolutely terrible job, and the American people are right to question it," Clayton said. He added the California system, which facilitates the widespread use of mail-in voting that Democrats are more likely to use, creates "the opportunity for fraud. ... Why is is always 100% Democrats in the mail-in?"Here’s what to know about Clayton:Who is Jay Clayton?Trump first announced he was picking Clayton to become the top New York prosecutor in November 2024, shortly after his election to a second term.Trump had tapped Clayton as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in his first administration, where he served from May 2017 to December 2020.During his tenure at SEC, the commission brought more than 2,300 enforcement actions, often in coordination with the SDNY and other criminal authorities, resulting in more than $10 billion in penalties and returning more than $3 billion to harmed investors, according to his Justice Department biographical page.A former Securities and Exchange chief and private lawyerWhile at the SEC, Clayton was also a member of several key regulatory and advisory bodies, including the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. He frequently testified before Congress on issues like improving market integrity and efficiency, cybersecurity and U.S.-China economic interdependence.After the SEC, Clayton served as chairman of Apollo Global Management and returned to his former law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, as an “of counsel” attorney and senior policy adviser. He also served on the board of the American Express Company.At his law firm, he served as an adviser to companies on issues related to the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the DOJ and other agencies. The SEC, which is responsible for policing Wall Street, brought the fewest number of insider trading cases in decades during Clayton’s tenure, according to NPR.NPR reviewed data from the 1980s through 2019 and found that under the first Trump administration, the SEC brought just 32 insider trading enforcement actions in 2019, the lowest number since 1996.Clayton began his legal career as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Katz in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1993 to 1995. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering before earning two degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.What has Clayton been doing as a top DOJ official?In his first administration, Trump had nominated Clayton as head of SDNY to replace Geoffrey Berman, who the president fired. That nomination was stalled after Trump lost the White House in 2020. The office had been investigating cases related to Trump’s inauguration committee and his associates.Since returning to SDNY, Clayton has overseen numerous high-profile cases, including the convictions of Alon, Oren, and Tal Alexander on multiple federal sex offenses, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.His office also obtained the guilty plea of former Venezuelan general Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios and the superseding indictment and January arrest of then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on narco-terrorism and other charges.
