WASHINGTON (AP) — Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the nation’s intelligence agencies, is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, weeks after Trump abruptly delayed his nomination.
Republicans and even some Democrats have been eager to quickly confirm Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, as they have expressed concerns about
Trump’s interim appointee for the intelligence post, Bill Pulte. Pulte, who has been in the job since June 19, is a former housing official with no known intelligence experience and who used his previous administration perch to target perceived adversaries of the president.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., expressed frustration when Trump delayed Clayton’s nomination in a social media post last month, allowing Pulte to take office. Cotton said then that Clayton had been instructed not to appear at a scheduled confirmation hearing, but he rescheduled the hearing three weeks later, with apparent approval from the White House.
Opening the hearing on Wednesday, Cotton said Clayton's reputation is that he has operated with “morality, decency and integrity" and that he hopes his nomination will win bipartisan support.
While Clayton has received some bipartisan praise, Democrats are expected to aggressively question him on how he would approach the issue of election interference, especially as Trump has said he will deliver a primetime address on Thursday with a focus on elections, suggesting he could revisit long-debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
“Trump made it clear that he expects whomever is Director of National Intelligence to promote his baseless election conspiracy theories,” said Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the intelligence panel, after the nomination was delayed last month.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in June that he has “known and respected Jay Clayton for many years and believe he is a capable public servant.” But he has stopped short of saying he would vote for him.
In his opening statement at the hearing, Warner said to Clayton that the intelligence post is “a very different job than any that you have held.”
Warner said that the Trump administration has attempted to politicize the intelligence community, particularly in the area of election interference. “I hope that, should you be confirmed, you will make it clear that this kind of politicization has no place in the intelligence community,” Warner said.
Most Democrats are expected to vote against his nomination. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Tuesday that he expects to oppose Clayton, but he and other Democrats may not object if majority Republicans want to try and speed up his confirmation so that he can replace Pulte.
“I’m not going to vote for him,” Blumenthal said. “But I wouldn’t object to an accelerated vote.”
Clayton is currently the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the most prestigious of the Justice Department’s prosecution offices. His cases have ranged from terrorism and espionage cases to security fraud and public corruption.
Democrats are certain to press Clayton on his role in recent subpoenas of four New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called the subpoenas “an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations and have a chilling effect on the work of journalists across the country."
Under Clayton, the office also 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 has also overseen the prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, on drug trafficking charges.
Clayton’s confirmation could potentially clear the way for bipartisan legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which stalled last month when Democrats had said they would not provide the necessary votes to pass the bill unless Pulte’s temporary appointment was withdrawn.
The law, which aims to prevent terrorist attacks by monitoring the communications of targeted foreigners located outside the United States, expired in June.
Even if Democrats relent, though, it is unclear if Trump would sign it. He said in his June social media post delaying Clayton’s nomination that he would not sign the FISA renewal without his legislation to require proof of citizenship for all voters — which does not have enough votes to pass the Senate.
Clearing Clayton’s nomination “would be a good first step” in moving the FISA renewal, said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the intelligence panel.
Rounds said that Republicans hope to move Clayton’s nomination quickly through the process, if Democrats don’t object.
“We’re looking forward to getting him into that position as quickly as possible,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
