Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community who was confirmed in a 51-47 vote on Tuesday night, steps into his new job inheriting a diminished office whose authority and relevance are at a historic low point.
The new director of national intelligence succeeds Bill Pulte, a combative and controversial housing executive with no national security experience whom Trump installed as acting director for a 40-day tenure.
The worst fears of Pulte’s critics — that he would use his access to classified intelligence to persecute the president’s political enemies, fears that several senators described as encouraging a swift confirmation of Clayton — did not come to pass. Pulte did accelerate sharp staffing cuts that Trump had ordered and critics argued would hamstring the intelligence community, but there is broad bipartisan agreement that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had become too large, too bloated. Some Republican Senate Intelligence staffers, who had been concerned initially over Pulte’s appointment and lack of experience, later said they were pleased with the work Pulte had done to cut some of that bloat.
Clayton, whose legal career centered on corporate law before serving as a US attorney under Trump, must now chart a course for an organization that struggled with its mandate even before Donald Trump and his allies made it their top “Deep State” target.
