Jay Clayton confirmed as director of national intelligence

Savannah Behrmann, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 28, 2026

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WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday evening confirmed Walter “Jay” Clayton to be President Donald Trump’s new director of national intelligence.

It was a party-line vote of 51-47, with no Democrats joining Republicans. Clayton will replace Bill Pulte, whose temporary appointment last month riled many Democrats after the resignation of former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Calling him a “proven leader,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., pointed to Clayton’s high-profile work as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, like prosecuting terrorists and helping to indict Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.

“Jay Clayton’s record inspires confidence in the type of DNI that he will be,” Thune said this week on the floor.

But even as Democrats were eager to replace Pulte, they soured on Clayton, saying his performance in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month raised concerns. They pressed him on subpoenas of New York Times reporters and complained he dodged questions about who won the 2020 election.

“I’ve known Jay for a long time. I like Jay. I worked well with him when he was at the SEC,” Senate Intelligence ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., said this month on “Face the Nation,” referring to Clayton’s past stint leading the Securities and Exchange Commission. “But I was bitterly disappointed by his performance in front of my committee.”

On Tuesday, Warner said in a statement, “Now that he has been confirmed, I sincerely hope he proves those concerns unfounded, because the Intelligence Community deserves steadier leadership than it has received in recent months.”

The confirmation comes amid debate over the ODNI’s role and the size of the U.S. intelligence community. Pulte made good on Trump’s threat to cut intelligence jobs, posting Tuesday that he was “Executing a 5th and Near Final Round of TERMINATIONS, an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago.”

Democrats had written to Pulte, who also heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, last month warning him against such firings, saying they weren’t appropriate for an acting official not confirmed by the Senate.

With Pulte out, some hope to see movement on another burning spy question — reauthorizing the now-expired Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the U.S. government to collect digital communications of foreigners located outside the country.

Democrats had vowed to halt negotiations until a permanent DNI was in place. And Trump complicated matters, too, saying any action on FISA should come with passage of unrelated voter ID legislation known as the SAVE America Act. In June, Trump aired those demands and abruptly instructed Clayton not to appear for his original confirmation hearing, which delayed his nomination by weeks.

Tuesday’s vote won’t bring a magic fix on FISA, senators warn. Some privacy-minded members in both parties want to see changes to the program, like warrant requirements for Americans swept up in searches.

The vote on Clayton came on an otherwise somber day for senators, who spent much of the morning and afternoon remembering the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, first at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, and then at a funeral service across town at the National Cathedral.

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(Nina Heller contributed to this report.)