Washington — Jay Clayton assured senators Wednesday that if he’s confirmed as director of national intelligence, he’ll be “mission-focused and team-oriented” in his approach and will work to strengthen coordination between the intelligence community and the American public.
Clayton said in his opening statement for his Senate confirmation hearing that as DNI, he would focus on “enhancing the trust of the American people in the ODNI.” Citing his tenure as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton said that the job has given him “significant national security experience,” including on matters involving foreign terrorist organizations, counter-espionage, money laundering and bribery and the abuse of communications platforms “to create and sow distrust.”
He told senators he’s acted as the principal liaison with senior officials at the Treasury, State and Defense departments and advised officials on various matters in his former capacity as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Clayton’s testimony came after President Trump abruptly canceled plans to move forward with his nomination to the post last month. In June, Mr. Trump pushed Senate Republicans to cancel his own nominee’s hearing, saying Clayton’s nomination should not move forward until the Senate approved a replacement for him in his current role as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Trump also suggested that the nomination process was moving too quickly and would prevent his controversial pick for acting intelligence chief, Bill Pulte, from temporarily taking the helm.
Mr. Trump’s selection of Pulte, a housing official, as acting director roiled the Senate last month, and led Democrats to refuse to agree to an extension of a warrantless surveillance program under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Senate Republicans had been moving quickly to confirm Clayton with the hope of breaking a logjam on the surveillance program a few days after it expired. But the president dashed those plans when he pushed for the mid-June hearing to be canceled.
Soon afterward, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton announced that the hearing had been postponed. The Arkansas Republican called it “regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing.”
As Clayton appeared Wednesday for his belated confirmation hearing, Section 702 remained lapsed, and Pulte has been the acting DNI since June 19.
In his opening statement, Cotton praised Clayton, calling him a “seasoned professional in both government and private practice” and someone who’s “operated with morality, decency and integrity.” The Arkansas Republican also expressed his view that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence should be pared down, saying, “the right number of staff at the ODNI would number in the dozens, maybe a couple hundreds at the maximum, but certainly not the thousands of recent years.”
Cotton said, that “Congress intended the ODNI to be a lean and efficient organization to keep bureaucratic intelligence agencies at bay,” and now, 20 years later, “the ODNI has unfortunately become yet another bloated agency that incentivizes bureaucratic make-work as opposed to genuine intelligence work.”
The chairman also asked Clayton whether he had been involved in anything pertaining to an address the president plans to deliver Thursday night, which could relate to intelligence concerning allegations of election fraud. Clayton replied that he was “not involved.” When asked by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chairman, about the outcome of the 2020 election, Clayton said “I’m not an election denier.”
“Joe Biden was certified as the president of the United States,” he added.
But Democrats continued to press Clayton on election integrity and his view of the outcome of the 2020 election during the hearing. In a notable exchange with independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, Clayton said, “The government processes for gathering, aggregating and providing data need to be improved greatly.” He added that “the audit trail that we have available for our elections in a number of places is not the kind of audit trail that you would expect in something that is this important.”
Pressed by King on whether he thinks the U.S. has a problem with voter fraud, Clayton said, “I don’t think we can say definitively whether there is or is not until we have better processes.”
“I would love for the American people to have incredible confidence in the integrity of our elections,” Clayton said.
The top intelligence post became open after former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in May that she would resign due to her husband’s cancer diagnosis. The next week, Mr. Trump announced Pulte as acting director. And after intense pushback over the pick, and pressure from Senate Republicans to select a long-term director, Mr. Trump announced Clayton would be his permanent pick for the role on June 11 — hours before the warrantless surveillance authority was set to expire.
Clayton is well regarded by Republicans and Democrats and leads the U.S. Attorney’s Office in one of the highest-profile and most prestigious jurisdictions in the country. He had a lengthy career at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which is representing the president in his appeal of his criminal conviction for hiding a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as well as his appeal in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon pressed Clayton on about subpoenas he issued to three New York Times journalists last week after they reported that the new Air Force One, which was donated by Qatar, does not have all of the advanced security features possessed by the older planes. The Times said that the journalists were ordered to testify before a Manhattan federal grand jury on Wednesday, the same day as Clayton’s confirmation hearing.
Clayton said the subpoenas were “in connection with an ongoing national security investigation,” but he offered to speak more to the committee about the approach to limiting “to the greatest extent possible, any intrusion into the operation of the free press.”
“I am absolutely committed to and respect our First Amendment and the role of the press,” Clayton said.