WASHINGTON — On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Jay Clayton, the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, to serve as the director of national intelligence.
Trump made the announcement via social media in response to increasing pressure from Congress to appoint a permanent successor to Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from the position last month. The President had faced significant criticism for appointing Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as the acting director. The role is critical, overseeing the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies.
This decision has sparked a standoff in Congress, with Democrats threatening to withhold the renewal of foreign intelligence powers unless Pulte’s nomination is retracted and a permanent nominee is appointed.
“Few people in the legal community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump stated. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”
As the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Clayton manages the largest and most prestigious office within the Justice Department, tackling an extensive array of cases from terrorism and espionage to securities fraud and public corruption.
Clayton succeeded interim U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon, who stepped down in February after declining to comply with orders from the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The charges were subsequently dropped following a request from Washington prosecutors to a judge.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says the Senate could move “fairly quickly” to confirm Clayton as Director of National Intelligence if the White House submits his paperwork soon.
He praised Clayton after Trump said on social media that he would nominate him for the job, saying he has a “great reputation.”
Democrats are holding up the renewal of a key surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in protest of Trump’s decision to temporarily tap Pulte. They say they won’t support an extension of the law, which expires at midnight on Friday, until Trump withdraws Pulte’s appointment.
Trump previously said Pulte would take over on June 19. It is unclear whether the Senate could move quickly enough to confirm Clayton before that date.
“I don’t know what realistic is, but we’re gonna probe the limits of it,” Thune said.
Clayton appeared Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he raised questions about the integrity of California’s elections. Trump has claimed without evidence that the state’s slow count in its recent primaries meant the vote was rigged.
“The American people are right to question it,” Clayton said, adding that the delay in results increased the opportunity for fraud.
He navigated his way through a 14-month tenure in the Southern District of New York without clashing with the federal judges in the busiest court in the nation, unlike his counterparts in upstate New York and New Jersey. After his interim term expired after 120 days, the judges of the Southern District appointed him as U.S. attorney.
Clayton was sworn in as U.S. attorney in April 2025 on the same day three prosecutors resigned, saying they felt pressured to admit wrongdoing or regret about prosecuting the now-dismissed corruption case against then-New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Then, weeks later, the office had to withstand controversy over the Trump administration’s firing of one of its most respected and successful prosecutors, Maurene Comey. She claims she was fired because of Trump’s dislike of her father, former FBI Director James Comey.
Under Clayton, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office facilitated the unsealing of thousands of pages of court records from the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – documents that were made public as part of the Justice Department’s release of records related to the late sex offender and his longtime confidant.
Clayton filed documents with the court explaining the process the government followed in releasing the materials.
Clayton has also overseen the prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, on drug trafficking charges.
Trump doubled down on naming Pulte as the acting director, even though he emphasized it would be a short-term job. The president said he wanted Pulte to downsize the office, which has already been significantly scaled back in his second term.
Gabbard resigned on May 22, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
Trump said last week that he was interviewing five candidates for his pick to lead the agency permanently and that all have national security backgrounds.
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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Michael Sisak and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.
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