{"id":330,"date":"2026-07-15T10:40:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=330"},"modified":"2026-07-15T10:40:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:40:57","slug":"the-biggest-question-jay-clayton-has-to-answer-before-becoming-dni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=330","title":{"rendered":"The biggest question Jay Clayton has to answer before becoming DNI"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Only eight people have served as the United States\u2019 director of national intelligence. Jay Clayton is hoping to become the ninth. When he sits before the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday morning, he will face appropriately tough questions about how he would lead and coordinate the nation\u2019s 18 intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump plans primetime speech on voting machines and foreign influence in elections<\/a><\/p>\n

Clayton appears to have enough backing, including among key Democrats, to sail through the confirmation process.<\/p>\n

America has adversaries, such as China and Russia, with formidable espionage services, but it\u2019s likely that the sharpest questions Clayton will face won\u2019t be about how he\u2019ll manage those threats. Incredibly, it\u2019s now more important to learn how Clayton will manage expectations from a president who may want to turn this nation\u2019s spies against America\u2019s own citizens.<\/p>\n

When Clayton\u2019s name was first put forward to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, there was a bit of a sigh of relief that President Donald Trump was tapping someone so serious<\/em>. For the past 14 months, Clayton, as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has been one of the most prestigious and high-profile prosecutors in the country. Before then, the Senate confirmed him to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

Clayton\u2019s most recent predecessors lowered the bar he needs to hit to be considered a viable nominee. Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from the role in May, had proved herself to be, at best, a shaky member of Trump\u2019s Cabinet. By the time the administration was debating whether to attack Iran this year, Gabbard had been mostly sidelined.<\/p>\n

Distressingly, ahead of her departure, Gabbard had become interested in elections. She was present at a January FBI raid on an elections office in Georgia\u2019s Fulton County. Fulton County is at the center of Trump\u2019s false \u2014 and ongoing \u2014 claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Gabbard reportedly had spent months before the January raid investigating Trump\u2019s conspiracies surrounding the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

Read more How MAGA cynically created a moral panic about Zohran Mamdani and Italian Americans<\/a><\/p>\n

When Gabbard stepped down, Trump announced \u00a0Bill Pulte as acting DNI, even though the law requires that the director possess \u201cextensive national security experience.\u201d Pulte was and is director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Trump immediately set him to work by having him fire intelligence agency staffers who were deemed to be part of the so-called Deep State and who reportedly aided a White House task force reviewing classified intelligence related to U.S. elections.<\/p>\n

The outcry from Pulte\u2019s temporary appointment led to Democrats walking away from a deal to extend a key spying law in protest died down somewhat when Trump nominated Clayton as Gabbard\u2019s permanent successor. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement at the time that he has \u201cknown and respected Jay Clayton for many years\u201d and believes Clayton \u201cis a capable public servant.\u201d Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, likewise wrote on X that Clayton\u2019s \u201cintelligence, temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are reasons to be concerned. Trump tapped him for the role just three days after Clayton appeared on CNBC and was asked about the pace of vote counting following California\u2019s primary elections. Rather than dismissing as out of hand the suggestion that anything untoward was causing the lengthy count, Clayton instead said America is \u201cdoing an absolutely terrible job\u201d on election integrity, \u201cand the American people are right to question it.\u201d He added that the state\u2019s mail-in balloting \u201cmakes the opportunity for fraud so much greater when that is not necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump had made similar, baseless points about California\u2019s elections and the safety of mail-in voting more broadly. But there\u2019s been no evidence about widespread fraud or irregularities in voting, either in California\u2019s most recent primaries or the 2020 election. Clayton did clarify when challenged that he was \u201cnot speculating about fraud. I\u2019m not saying there is fraud,\u201d before adding that \u201cthe opportunity for fraud makes no sense to me.\u201d It\u2019s troubling that he gave credence to the premise at all. It\u2019s also unsurprising given how often it\u2019s been used as a litmus test for staying in Trump\u2019s good graces.<\/p>\n

Clayton needs to make clear where he stands on elections, and the role of the ODNI in protecting elections, before he\u2019s given the keys to the most powerful intelligence community in the world. Democrats need to ask him whether he would take part in Trump\u2019s efforts to relitigate the 2020 election and if he would follow orders to intervene in future balloting. The competence that Clayton represents, especially relative to the acting DNI and former DNI, has led to him having a lot of support already. But that\u2019s a very low bar to clear, and if he doesn\u2019t vow to stay out of American elections, his competence alone cannot be enough reason to green-light his nomination.<\/p>\n

Read more What the collapse of Trump\u2019s Hormuz fee scheme reveals<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cElection integrity\u201d will be at the top of Trump\u2019s priorities for his new director of national intelligence \u2014 but it shouldn\u2019t be at the top of Jay Clayton\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\nThe biggest question Jay Clayton has to answer before becoming DNI - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=330\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The biggest question Jay Clayton has to answer before becoming DNI - 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