President Donald Trump on June 11 said he is nominating Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to be his director of national intelligence. The move comes weeks after former intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said she is stepping down from the role.

Trump, in announcing the decision on Truth Social, wrote that “few people anywhere” in the legal community have as much respect as Clayton, former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whom the president also described as “highly respected.”

“I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” he wrote in the post.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) indicated that he has a favorable impression of the nominee in response to a question from a reporter about whether the U.S. attorney has the national security experience needed for the role.

“I think that he has a great reputation as being an incredibly competent manager—so much so that ... the Southern District [of New York] judges put him in, even when he couldn’t get past the blue slip process,” Thune said while speaking to reporters in the Capitol on June 11.

He was referencing the so-called blue slip process that has led to many of Trump’s legal and judicial nominees in blue states being blocked. Because the Senate had been unable to agree on a permanent candidate for the U.S. attorney position in the Southern District of New York, the role was filled by a panel of federal judges for the district as required by law. Those judges selected Clayton to fill the vacant U.S. attorney post. 

“I think he’s considered to be a very qualified professional with a great skill set for managing a complex ... problem set,” Thune said. 

Last month, Gabbard announced that she was stepping down as the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) because her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte was named by Trump to serve as acting director in a move that drew pushback from Democratic and some Republican lawmakers.

Pulte will serve as the acting U.S. intelligence chief and take over from Gabbard later in June, Trump said on June 9.

Thune indicated that it may be difficult to fill the post before June 19, when Pulte is set to take over as acting director of national intelligence if an alternative candidate isn’t confirmed. 

Confirming Clayton by June 19 is “probing the limits” of what’s realistic, Thune said. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated that his top concern is keeping Pulte out of the post in any capacity. 

“The [director of national intelligence] role is too important for him to be there,” Schumer told reporters. “He has got to go. Period. No matter what else they do.”

Last week, the president told The Wall Street Journal that he would encourage Pulte to downsize parts of the intelligence office, which oversees 18 federal agencies and units.

“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said on June 5, noting that Pulte would have broader latitude to make significant changes due to his being the acting head of the ODNI.

“You’re less shackled,” he said. “It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time.”

Going further, Trump suggested that the ODNI could even be “terminated” in its entirety, noting that a similar downsizing process was undertaken at the Department of Education.

“We’ve made the Department of Education much smaller, and likewise, this should be much smaller,” he said.

Trump praised Pulte as a “very smart guy” while speaking to reporters last week and said that he “may find out some things about the rigged elections.”

However, the decision to name Pulte as acting director prompted Democratic opposition to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in a vote earlier this week.

“Just voted NO again on a clean FISA reauthorization,“ Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) wrote in a post on X as the House failed to extend the provision. ”We shouldn’t allow the government to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans—especially with Bill Pulte in charge.”

Some Republican senators indicated that they would not have voted to appoint Pulte if Trump had nominated him.

“The Senate doesn’t have any role to play in terms of confirming acting officials, but I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Hill about Pulte.

Clayton had served as head of the SEC from May 2017 until December 2020. He also served as the head of the prominent law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the largest in the world.