Overnight before today’s Senate hearing on President Trump’s nominee Jay Clayton for Director of National Intelligence, Trump told Clayton not to show up. The hearing was cancelled. Trump may claim to be the “Boss” at the G-7 meeting, but his convoluted June 17 post on Truth Social reveals that he is struggling with his Republican allies in the the Senate. In this post President Trump accused Republican leaders in the Senate of “falling into a trap.” Last week they failed to ram through the Trump-backed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) extension, and the misnamed voter ID law known as the “Save America Act” is still in limbo. President Trump wrote in his post that Republicans instead made a deal with Democrats, but the Democrats are already beginning to renege on that deal.
The President demands that Senate Republicans go back to an earlier order of business. President Trump will keep William Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and put on pause the Senate confirmation hearings designed to replace Pulte with Jay Clayton, who is serving as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. All reshuffling of DNI positions will await the approval of Jamie McDonald, the Sullivan & Cromwell New York law firm darling, to replace Clayton as the U.S. Attorney in southern New York.
