Dems reject Trump’s top spy pick after demanding replacement, leaving counter-terror tool in air
Senate Democrats demanded a new, experienced person to lead the nation’s spy agencies, but when given the chance, they rejected President Donald Trump’s latest pick.
Still, their resistance was not enough to stop Republicans from confirming Jay Clayton to be the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to replace former DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Clayton, who was tapped to be the top prosecutor in Manhattan last year, was confirmed on a party line vote Tuesday.
He will replace acting DNI and Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, whose interim appointment prompted Senate Democrats to demand an immediate, permanent replacement over fears that Pulte would weaponize the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies or try to dismantle them.
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Clayton’s confirmation was thought to be a means to an end for the ongoing standoff over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a tool that has been used to thwart several terror plots, including a planned mass-casualty event at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria.
However, they changed their tune when it came time to vote, and after a contentious confirmation hearing where only Republicans voted to send him to the Senate floor.
"As Senate Republicans move to once again confirm an inexperienced and unqualified nominee to a position of massive national security consequence for years to come, one thing remains clear — this type of politicized leadership will only make Americans less safe," Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Boiled down, the Section 702 program allows the U.S. government to collect intelligence on foreigners abroad who are using U.S. communication systems, and it serves as a major part of Trump’s daily intelligence briefing.
But it also sweeps up communications from Americans who are talking to foreign suspects — a key issue that threatened reauthorization among privacy hawks in both parties well before Pulte’s appointment and Clayton’s subsequent nomination.
The program expired, however, last month in response to Pulte’s appointment, despite warnings from Republicans that allowing Section 702 to go dark could have dire national security consequences.
And Clayton’s confirmation, for now, does not appear to be breaking through the partisan logjam. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Digital that the pressure wasn’t on to reauthorize FISA.
"Democrats have refused to pass a bipartisan FISA bill until a new DNI is confirmed," a spokesperson for Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told Fox News Digital. "Now that Jay Clayton is confirmed, it’s time for them to stop playing politics with national security and put up the votes to give our intelligence community the tools it needs to keep this country safe."
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"You know … we don't have the immediate time pressure because the communication providers are still cooperating," Warner said.
Before the deadline to reauthorize, lawmakers had differing trains of thought on what would exactly happen should it go completely dark. Some argued that it would slowly draw down, given that FISA courts had already authorized continued intelligence gathering until 2027.
Others worried that telecommunications giants, like Google, would ignore agreements without explicit authorization from Congress.
But, as Warner noted, the latter isn’t happening.
Still, it leaves Clayton and the intelligence community on a murky path forward in the months ahead. And there’s not much time left on the Senate’s calendar to tackle the issue. The upper chamber is slated to leave Washington after the first week of August, and won’t return until early September. From there, keeping the government open will be a top priority for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.