President Trump says he is delaying the nomination of Jay Clayton to be the next director of national intelligence and disrupting approval of a surveillance tool at the center of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in order to pressure the Senate to advance another nominee and approve a long-stalled voting bill.

Trump’s attempt to derail the confirmation came as a surprise social media post in the middle of the night less than 12 hours before Clayton is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee. Trump issued his demands in a post just before 4 a.m. eastern on Truth Social. Trump is currently at the G7 Summit in France.

In the post, Trump said the plan to quickly approve Clayton was part of a deal with Democrats to derail his previous, temporary pick, Bill Pulte, who has no intelligence experience and has been criticized as a political attack dog for the president. He went on to say he is demanding that reauthorization of the surveillance tool known as FISA Section 702 must be tied to an unrelated package of voting restrictions that has previously failed to advance in the Senate.

“Regarding the approval of our Great Patriot, Jay Clayton, we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today, and will not be going forward until Jamie McDonald is approved to be U.S. Attorney. In the meantime, Bill Pulte will remain as the Acting Director of National Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump concluded.

It is a dramatic reversal for a nomination that had the potential to speed through the Senate, possibly with bipartisan support.

Who is Jay Clayton?

Clayton currently serves as a federal prosecutor, in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In that role, he’s overseen a number of high-profile cases including the indictment and arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was previously confirmed by the Senate to serve as the head of the Securities and Exchange commission during President Trump’s first term.

The director of national intelligence leads the intelligence community across 18 agencies and organizations and advises the president on national security issues, including through drafting and delivering the President’s Daily Brief.

Senate lawmakers hoped for a speedy confirmation for Clayton, aiming to have him sworn in by June 19, the date that President Trump has said that his controversial pick for acting director, Bill Pulte, will step into the role on a temporary basis.

Controversy over Bill Pulte, Trump’s interim pick

Pulte’s appointment earlier this month was met with dismay on Capitol Hill. He currently serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and would enter the job with no national intelligence experience.

He has used his current sub-cabinet level role to assail the president’s perceived foes. He was a cheerleader for Trump’s pressure campaign that sought to push then-Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to resign. Pulte has also used his social media following to broadcast accusations that several of the president’s perceived enemies had committed mortgage fraud, including Fed official Lisa Cook, New York’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Each has denied wrongdoing.

Given his record, Democrats and even some Republicans worry he will weaponize the key national security role. The uproar over Pulte contributed to the expiration on Friday of a nearly two decade-old spy law that underpins a great deal of U.S. intelligence gathering.

The president has suggested that Pulte will serve in the role for some amount of time. Trump told the Wall Street Journal he hopes to see Pulte declassify documents related to the 2020 election and downsize the agency.

Pressure to move quickly

Senators appeared highly motivated to move Clayton quickly through the process before Trump’s sudden intervention. They had hoped to prevent or minimize Pulte’s time in the job. Clayton’s confirmation hearing date was set within hours of his nomination to the post.

If confirmed, Clayton would succeed outgoing director Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

During her brief tenure, Gabbard had been a controversial director. A former Democrat, she was nominated to the role despite her lack of experience in U.S. intelligence and remarks supporting autocratic leaders in Syria and Russia. She was ultimately confirmed in a near-party line vote.

While serving as director of national intelligence, charged with presenting an objective view of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessments to policymakers including the president, Gabbard attended an FBI raid on a Georgia election office that has been at the heart of Trump’s baseless election fraud conspiracy theories.

Rep. Barry Moore won the Republican primary runoff in the Alabama Senate race, NBC News projects, making him the heavy favorite in the general election to succeed Sen. Tommy Tuberville this fall.

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Moore, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, defeated former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson for the GOP nomination. The two candidates were forced into a runoff after no one secured more than 50% of the vote in a crowded May 19 primary field.

Alabama’s Senate seat opened up after Tuberville launched his run for governor last year. He easily won the GOP nomination in the race last month.

In a victory speech Tuesday, Moore pointed to his relationship with Trump.

“When I call [Trump], he takes my calls, and we can work together with the senators, that delegation and certainly the president of the United States to make sure that Alabama has an opportunity to bring the jobs back here that we need,” Moore said.

Trump held a tele-rally with Moore last week and reiterated his endorsement Monday on Truth Social, calling Moore “an America First Patriot who has been with me from the very beginning.” Moore’s campaign featured Trump’s endorsements in multiple advertisements.

Moore, a former state lawmaker who was first elected to Congress in 2020, has pushed against allowing transgender women and girls to play in women’s sports and criticized “lawless Democrat sanctuary” cities while positioning himself as a staunch pro-gun advocate.

Hudson, who is the CEO of groups that work with law enforcement to combat child trafficking and focus on firearms instruction, tried to run as a political outsider. He ran unsuccessfully for Jefferson County sheriff in 2022.

And while Moore won Trump’s backing, Hudson campaigned as a “warrior for President Trump’s America First Agenda.”

“I will deploy to the Senate to defend President Trump with the same ethos they taught us in SEAL training: I am never out of the fight and I will not fail,” Hudson said on his website.

The runoff campaign turned negative. An outside group aligned with Hudson accused Moore, who served in the Alabama National Guard and Army Reserve, of “stolen valor.” In a 2024 letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed by dozens of GOP lawmakers, the Republicans accused Walz, then the Democratic vice presidential nominee, of misrepresenting his military service. Moore is listed as a signer, which marked him as having served as a “staff sergeant.”

Records shared by Moore’s campaign, though, indicated Moore was discharged with a rank of cadet.

Moore’s campaign released further information, saying his pay grade was “E-6 Staff Sergeant,” adding that “Barry has never called himself a retired Staff Sergeant, or even a Staff Sergeant nor did he retire from service — he was honorably discharged.”

Moore’s campaign also defended the title discrepancy on the Walz letter in a release on his website.

“That was a coalition letter signed by a lot of people, and the Staff Sergeant and retired title line was supplied by its organizers,” the website said. “He has never used that title and never affirmed it.”

Moore also faced questions about a 2020 ad in which he said he has “been in those combat boots,” though he did not serve overseas or in combat.

“Members of the National Guard wear combat boots to train. Here is a link to the shoe,” Moore’s website said, responding to questions about the ad.

Moore also said in a video on social media that he was “never in combat, and I never claimed to be.”

Source: Election results are from The Associated Press.

By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Jasmine C. Lee, Alex Lemonides, Zach Levitt, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Caroline Soler, Charlie Smart, Luke Vrotsos and Christine Zhang.

Additional contributions by Camille Baker, Sarah Cahalan, Amanda Cordero, Patrick Hays, Jacob Meschke, Evan Reynolds and Jessica White.

Edited by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Kenan Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney.

Source: Election results are from The Associated Press.