Senate GOP confirms Jay Clayton as U.S. spy chief

Senate Republicans confirmed Jay Clayton, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, as the new head of the U.S. intelligence community, a position that’s become central to President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections.

With the Senate’s 51-47 vote Tuesday, Clayton will take control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) after Trump has oriented the agency toward supporting his false election claims. 

Clayton will replace Bill Pulte, a top housing finance official who has served as acting director of national intelligence (DNI) since former DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation in June. Under Pulte and Gabbard, ODNI has probed election conspiracy theories and helped declassify intelligence to bolster Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Clayton, a securities lawyer by trade who has no known intelligence background, assumes the DNI role after making alarming claims on U.S. elections in recent weeks. 

Though he said he was “not an election denier” during his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Clayton repeatedly declined to clearly state who won the 2020 election. 

Instead, he said “Biden was certified as the president of the United States,” which is a carefully worded statement several Trump nominees have used to avoid explicitly saying Biden won — and, by extension, that Trump lost the 2020 contest.

Days before Trump nominated him for DNI, Clayton perpetuated misinformation about California primary elections. Specifically, he took aim at California’s mail voting laws and, without providing evidence, implied that an unspecified “group” was abusing mail voting to throw elections in the state.

Clayton made the claims as Trump and prominent anti-voting figures were spreading false claims about California’s prolonged vote count to push for the SAVE America Act and new restrictions on mail voting, which has been a leading target of the election denial movement. 

Clayton refused to clarify those statements in his confirmation hearing. 

Trump previously delayed Clayton’s confirmation to pressure lawmakers into passing the SAVE America Act, his sweeping voter suppression bill that’s been stalled in the Senate. If passed, the act would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. 

The delay allowed Pulte, one of Trump’s attack dogs who set in motion several criminal cases against the president’s enemies, to remain acting DNI for weeks. In addition to purging hundreds of officials from the agency, Pulte was heavily involved with a White House task force that declassified election-related documents.

Trump centered those documents in a primetime address earlier this month that doubled as another attempt to pressure Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. He asserted the declassified intelligence showed sweeping foreign interference in past elections. However, heavily redacted documents either did not back or directly refuted the president’s claims.

Before Pulte, Gabbard directed ODNI to obtain and probe Puerto Rico’s voting systems based on claims that Venezuela had hacked machines in 2020, a conspiracy theory election deniers and far-right influencers have pushed for years.

Clayton served as the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman during Trump’s first term before becoming the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York last year. 

While U.S. attorney, Clayton was assigned to probe ties convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a longtime friend and former confidant of Trump’s — had with several prominent Democrats and institutions. The status of that investigation is unclear. 

He was also involved in the Justice Department’s flawed release of the files it had on Epstein.