Trump Delays Clayton DNI Hearing Until McDonald Confirmed as US Attorney

President Donald Trump announced early Wednesday that the Senate Intelligence Committee would not hold a scheduled confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton to serve as director of national intelligence. The move leaves Bill Pulte, a housing finance official with no intelligence background, in place as acting DNI and further complicates efforts to renew a lapsed foreign surveillance authority.

Trump made the declaration in a lengthy Truth Social post shortly before 4 a.m. while attending the G7 summit in France. He said the hearing would remain off until Jamie McDonald, recently nominated to succeed Clayton as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, receives Senate confirmation. Clayton currently holds that prosecutorial post and has been viewed by Senate Republicans as a relatively uncontroversial choice to lead the intelligence community.

The president framed the delay as a response to what he described as a broken agreement over reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under that provision, which lapsed last week, intelligence agencies can collect communications of foreign targets located outside the United States without individual warrants. Trump said Republicans had moved too quickly on Clayton’s nomination after agreeing to sideline Pulte, allowing Democrats to withhold support for the surveillance measure once Pulte’s path to the acting role appeared blocked.

Senate Republicans had hoped a swift confirmation for Clayton could clear the way for FISA renewal by addressing Democratic concerns about Pulte’s qualifications. Instead, Trump tied any future progress on the surveillance law to passage of the Save America Act, a package of voting and election changes that has previously stalled in the Senate. He also noted resistance from some Republicans to altering the informal “blue slip” process that gives home-state senators leverage over certain nominations.

The sequence leaves the intelligence community without permanent leadership at a moment when key legal authorities have expired. Tulsi Gabbard resigned as DNI late last month, and Pulte’s interim status rests on the administration’s decision not to advance Clayton until his replacement at the U.S. attorney’s office is secured. Democrats have signaled they will continue to oppose FISA reauthorization while Pulte remains in the acting role, and it is unclear whether Republican leaders can assemble enough votes to move the surveillance measure on their own.

Clayton’s nomination had been positioned as a way to stabilize the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after weeks of uncertainty. By pausing that process, Trump has shifted leverage back toward his original preference for Pulte and broadened the set of issues—surveillance authorities, voting legislation, and prosecutorial appointments—now linked together in the Senate. How committee leaders respond to the abrupt change in schedule will determine whether any of those matters advance before the summer recess.