US President Donald Trump has announced he will nominate federal prosecutor Jay Clayton to be the next director of national intelligence (DNI). The announcement on Thursday comes amid pushback over Trump’s selection of Bill Pulte as acting director to oversee the US intelligence community following Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation.

Trump loyalist Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has no intelligence or military experience. Democrats vowed to withhold foreign intelligence powers if Trump did not name a new DNI, with a handful of Republicans calling on the president to change course.

While Pulte was only selected in an acting capacity, he could technically remain in the role for 210 days after taking office. By not being officially nominated, he would have also circumvented Senate confirmation.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump hailed Clayton, currently a US attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump wrote, urging the Senate to confirm him as soon as possible.

Clayton’s confirmation will require a majority vote in the US Senate, where Republicans currently hold 53 out of 100 seats. The nomination comes a day after Trump advised Pulte to cut staff at the office that oversees 18 intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA.

Gabbard, a former Democrat who endorsed Trump ahead of the 2024 election, announced last month she was leaving the post, citing her husband’s cancer treatment. She had initially embraced Trump for his anti-interventionist positions, but later events appeared to undermine her own ideological stance.

Source: www.aljazeera.com