WASHINGTON — The Senate approved President Donald Trump’s choice to oversee the country’s spy agencies, with the Republican majority voting Tuesday to install top Manhattan federal prosecutor Jay Clayton as the next director of national intelligence.Clayton will be inheriting a much smaller agency after the office’s workforce was cut in a series of firings in recent weeks and months by his predecessors.And his confirmation follows accusations from Democratic lawmakers and former national security officials that the Trump White House has attempted to use the intelligence agencies to wage partisan political warfare.
The vote was 51-47 along party lines.Hours earlier, the acting intelligence chief, Bill Pulte, announced in a social media post what he called a fifth round of job cuts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) since he took office in June.But he did not say how many positions were cut or how many employees were fired or merely reassigned to other intelligence agencies.
Pulte described the move as “an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago.”The ODNI had roughly 2,000 employees at the start of Trump’s second term in 2025, and his first director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had proposed cuts in the workforce of about 40%.The 30% reduction cited by Pulte could put the current ODNI workforce at about 1,000, former officials said.The ODNI declined to comment.
The White House declined to comment.A spokesperson for the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen.
Mark Warner of Virginia, said Pulte has failed to share with lawmakers information about workforce reductions or a rationale for the cuts.“The Acting DNI has been quick to announce firings and make public claims about them, but has so far declined to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with the information necessary to assess the accuracy of those statements or the basis for those decisions,” said Rachel Cohen, Warner’...