The U.S. Senate approved Manhattan federal prosecutor Jay Clayton as the next director of national intelligence on Tuesday.
Clayton passed the U.S. Senate with a vote of 51-47 along party lines, succeeding acting director Bill Pulte, who stepped in following the departure of Tulsi Gabbard due to her husband’s cancer diagnosis. Clayton’s nomination received heavy pushback from Democrats, with accusations that he would use the intelligence apparatus against political enemies.
“Having known and worked with Jay for years, I was encouraged when he was first nominated for the position of DNI,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said in a statement following the confirmation. “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.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (AR), Republican leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, hailed Clayton as a “highly qualified nominee with a deep experience combatting a wide range of national security threats.”
“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,” he said.
As noted by NBC News, Clayton will be inheriting a smaller agency following a series of layoffs and firings by then-acting director Bill Pulte:
Hours earlier, the acting intelligence chief, Bill Pulte, announced in a social media post what he called a fifth round of job cuts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) 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 ODNI had roughly 2,000 employees at the start of Trump’s second term in 2025, and his first director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had proposed cuts in the workforce of about 40%. The 30% reduction cited by Pulte could put the current ODNI workforce at about 1,000, former officials said.
According to CNN, a White House source said that “Trump was very happy with the job Pulte did cutting positions, but whether the president considers the job finished remains to be seen.”
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