Trump Blocks Own Intel Nominee to Force Senate Vote on Election Bill

President Trump is deliberately stalling his own nominee for director of national intelligence, holding Jay Clayton's Senate confirmation hostage to pressure Republican lawmakers into passing a stalled election security bill — a standoff that leaves a politically combustible temporary figure running the nation's entire intelligence apparatus.

Trump issued two demands in an overnight social media post Wednesday. He said he would withhold Clayton's confirmation proceedings until the Senate confirmed a replacement for Clayton's current post as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He also threatened to block renewal of a critical Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provision — one that officials say underpins 60 percent of the president's daily intelligence brief — unless the Senate passes the Save America Act, his election security legislation.

Bill Pulte, whom Trump installed as acting director of national intelligence, now controls the surveillance and intelligence operations of all 18 U.S. spy agencies with no national security or intelligence background. Pulte, previously director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used that earlier post to publicly accuse Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California of mortgage fraud — a charge Schiff has denied — and to target former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Democrats warn that Pulte, given access to the government's full surveillance toolkit, poses a direct threat to civil liberties. Republicans, meanwhile, are frustrated by his lack of credentials for one of the most sensitive roles in the federal government.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged the arithmetic Trump's demands run into: The Save America Act has failed twice to clear the Senate's de facto 60-vote threshold. Republicans simply do not have the votes. Yet Trump has threatened to block the FISA tool renewal anyway, a move that would degrade U.S. counterterrorism and foreign intelligence capabilities.

For Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), whose FL-21 district covers Martin and St. Lucie counties, the intelligence standoff poses a direct political tension between loyalty to the White House and the national security equities his committees oversee. His office had not responded to a request for comment as of publication.

The Senate is expected to move quickly to confirm Clayton's Southern District replacement in an attempt to unlock Clayton's DNI nomination, though the goalposts keep moving, according to one congressional observer.

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