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July 15, 2026 / 6:00 AM EDT
/ CBS News
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Washington — Jay Clayton is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing Wednesday, after President Trump abruptly canceled plans to move forward with his nomination last month. The hearing on Capitol Hill is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Last month, Mr. Trump pushed Senate Republicans to cancel his own nominee's hearing, saying Clayton's nomination should not move forward until the Senate approved a replacement for him in his current role as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Trump also suggested that the nomination process was moving too quickly and would prevent his controversial pick for acting intelligence chief, Bill Pulte, from temporarily taking the helm. Mr. Trump's selection of Pulte, a housing official, as acting director roiled the Senate last month, and led Democrats to refuse to agree to an extension of a warrantless surveillance program under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Senate Republicans had been moving quickly to confirm Clayton with the hope of breaking a logjam on the surveillance program a few days after it expired. But the president dashed those plans when he pushed for the mid-June hearing to be canceled. Soon afterward, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton announced that the hearing had been postponed. The Arkansas Republican called it "regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing.""Mr. Clayton is a patriot and a highly qualified nominee, as the president has said repeatedly," Cotton wrote on X at the time. "I look forward to proceeding with his confirmation in the near future." Now, as Clayton appears Wednesday for his belated confirmation hearing, Section 702 remains lapsed, and Pulte has been the acting DNI since June 19.
