WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, is likely to get a friendly reception from lawmakers Wednesday at his confirmation hearing as both parties are eager for him to take over from the current acting intelligence chief.Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers see Clayton, the U.S.attorney for the Southern District of New York, as a relatively safe pair of hands to replace Bill Pulte, a political partisan who came to the job without any clear national security experience.
The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold the confirmation hearing amid growing concern among Democrats that Trump and his administration could try to use intelligence or law enforcement agencies to interfere with state governments overseeing midterm elections in November.A White House task force has collected thousands of pages of documents from intelligence agencies with plans to declassify some of them, providing Trump with a potential opportunity to renew baseless claims about fraud in past elections, NBC News has reported.Trump is due to deliver remarks Thursday evening that will focus in part on election integrity and his administration’s findings around the 2020 election.Clayton is expected to face questions from Democrats in particular about how he sees the intelligence director’s role with regard to U.S.
elections and whether he would be willing to provide unvarnished assessments to Trump.He told CNBC last month that the U.S.is “doing an absolutely terrible job” of ensuring the integrity of elections, “and the American people are right to question it.”Citing California’s election laws allowing registered voters to cast ballots by mail, Clayton claimed that “it makes the opportunity for fraud so much greater, when that is not necessary.”Election experts and California officials say there is no evidence of wid...