Search Articles
MANHATTAN (CN) — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he intends to nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as director of national intelligence.
“I am pleased to announce the nomination of very highly respected Jay Clayton, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the former head of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the most prominent and successful law firms anywhere in the world, and the current United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to be the next director of national intelligence and, importantly, to serve in my cabinet,” Trump said in a social media post.
“Few people anywhere in the legal community are respected at the level of Jay. I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” he added.
Trump faced backlash from lawmakers when he initially announced Bill Pulte, a top federal housing official and private equity investor, to fill the national intelligence role on an interim basis earlier this month. Pulte replaced Tulsi Gabbard — who stepped down in May — but faced immediate pushback from Democratic lawmakers due to his lack of national security experience and security clearance.
The tension reached a boiling point in Congress earlier on Thursday, when a proposed three-week extension to an expansive government surveillance authority went up in flames on the House floor.
That authority, section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, expires at midnight on Friday. Democrats said they wouldn’t support its extension until Trump ousted Pulte for someone else.
Clayton is that new option and, as head of the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office in the country, perhaps a choice that could win more bipartisan support. His prosecutors indicted Nicolás Maduro, the then-president of Venezuela, on narco-terrorism charges, leading to Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces earlier this year.
Clayton’s office also oversaw the review and release of thousands of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after Trump’s 2024 election win sparked renewed public interest in the case.
It is not immediately clear who would take over in Clayton’s absence. A spokesperson for the Southern District of New York didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Clayton took the reins of the prosecutor’s office at a tumultuous time. He replaced the district’s interim U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon in April 2025 — Sassoon resigned after refusing to comply with orders from top Justice Department officials to drop corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
The case was eventually dismissed, but not before raising serious concerns about the sovereignty of the DOJ and Trump’s White House.
Since then, Clayton has been a regular on cable news programs. Most recently, he appeared on CNBC earlier this week and parroted baseless conspiracy theories about the integrity of California’s mayoral election.
“The American people are right to question it,” Clayton said of the primary results, echoing unproven claims from Trump that the election was rigged against a Republican candidate.
Even if Clayton is a more palatable option than Pulte for lawmakers, Trump’s belated choice to nominate him may not immediately solve his Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act problem in Congress. Both the House and the Senate are scheduled to be out of session next week for Juneteenth, meaning the program may not get extended until late June at the earliest.
The specific element that lawmakers were looking to extend was a provision that granted U.S. intelligence broad legal authority to conduct surveillance on foreign nationals abroad without a warrant.
When the vote failed, House Speaker Mike Johnson laid blame squarely on Democrats, who he called “shameful” for holding the extension as a “political hostage” over their distrust for Pulte.
However, the vote failed to capture even a simple majority in the Republican-controlled House. Nineteen Republicans voted against the measure, joining 199 Democrats.
Follow @Uebey
Follow @uebey.bsky.socialSubscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.
