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The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence (DNI) in a 51-47 party-line vote, potentially reviving a stalled battle over renewing the nation’s warrantless spy powers.
Clayton, currently a U.S. attorney who served as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission under the first Trump administration, does not have the broad foreign policy and intelligence background of others who have led the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
But he received praise from Republicans and Democrats alike as being a better pick than acting DNI Bill Pulte, who has boasted about carrying out a series of five different rounds of layoffs in just over a month on the job.
As DNI, Clayton will oversee coordination among the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and produce a daily brief for the president.
But he comes to ODNI amid a push from President Trump to release more classified intelligence from the 2020 election, a dynamic that alarmed Democrats.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Democrats repeatedly pressed Clayton on the 2020 election, with the nominee telling the panel, “I’m not an election denier.”
But he said several times that former President Biden was “certified” as the winner, a comment many congressional Democrats see as sidestepping the reality that the former president won the contest.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement Tuesday that Clayton’s lack of national security experience and his answers on elections were disqualifying.
“When the position of the DNI was created by Congress after the 9/11 attacks, the law laid out a simple qualification for the position: that the DNI ‘shall have extensive national security expertise.’ Jay Clayton fails that foundational, statutory test,” Schiff wrote.
“Not only does Jay Clayton lack the expertise to lead the Intelligence Community, but he has also shown an unwillingness to speak truth to power – an essential prerequisite for any intelligence professional. If he cannot give Congress an honest answer about who won the 2020 election, how can we trust Clayton to prevent politicization of our intelligence agencies or provide objective analysis to the President, especially if that analysis conflicts with a false, but preferred narrative of the Commander in Chief?”
That view was not shared by Senate Republicans, all of whom backed Clayton.
“Amid a heightened threat environment, having a proven leader in this role is especially important,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on the Senate floor Monday ahead of a procedural vote to advance Clayton’s nomination.
He noted that Democrats including Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had praised his prior work as a public servant.
And he fumed that Democrats failed to back Clayton, noting it was disdain for Pulte that pushed the party to refuse to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The law allows the government to spy on foreigners located abroad, and has been lapsed since it expired June 12.
“We will have a permanent director of national intelligence in place shortly. And I hope this will encourage my colleagues to stop blocking the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” Thune said.
Clayton has also taken heat over leading the prosecutorial office that was responsible for issuing subpoenas to several New York Times journalists following a story about concerns over the safety of Trump’s new Qatari-gifted plane.
The Justice Department last week agreed to withdraw the subpoenas after a judge questioned nearly every aspect of the government’s approach, telling the attorneys they could rescind the subpoenas or he would quash them.
Many former intelligence community officials have spoken out about Clayton, including the 400 members of The Steady State, which issued a letter ahead of his vote expressing their “strong and unequivocal opposition.”
“Throughout history, democratic governments have failed when intelligence services, law enforcement agencies, and internal security organizations cease to serve the nation and instead become instruments of personal loyalty and political power. Jay Clayton’s nomination to be Director of National Intelligence presents precisely that danger and is the central issue of our opposition,” the organization’s leader, Steven A. Cash, wrote in the letter.
The group noted that the DNI is not just a coordinator but plays a key role in crafting the president’s daily brief. It described the role as being one that sits at the “intersection of secrecy and accountability,” saying Clayton’s leadership over prosecutors willing to subpoena journalists calls into question how he will use his power.
“Taken together, these facts reveal more than an unfinished record. They reveal a nominee who has repeatedly declined the chances to draw a clear line between service to the Constitution and service to the President personally,” Cash wrote.
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