President Donald Trump's permanent nominee to head up the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is facing a new problem.
According to HuffPost, Jay Clayton, who currently heads up the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, is now coming under fire for his role in the Justice Department’s new subpoenas against New York Times reporters.
These subpoenas, meant to secretly investigate leaks from the administration before ironically being leaked themselves, were done at the direction of the White House from on high — but executed with Clayton's sign-off. For some observers, it shatters the illusion that he was a more stable and normal pick for the job, but it remains to be seen whether or how much it complicates his path to confirmation.
"Progressive groups led by Demand Progress, which opposed Clayton to begin with, highlighted the subpoenas in a pressure campaign against Democratic senators who might be inclined to vote for the nominee," said the HuffPo report, noting that Indivisible and Reporters Without Borders were also part of the campaign. In letters to the Senate, the groups said, "A federal prosecutor who will weaponize the grand jury process against reporters — and their sources — to punish disclosures unwelcome to the president has shown the Senate the precise instinct that is disqualifying in a Director of National Intelligence."
Clayton was Trump's begrudging pick to serve as permanent DNI after he installed his close partisan ally, federal housing finance administrator Bill Pulte, to serve in the role on an acting basis, despite his lack of statutory qualifications to head the intelligence community and his track record of abusing public resources to target political foes.
The controversy actually led to a brief showdown with the Senate GOP, as Trump delayed confirmation hearings for Clayton so that he could install Pulte, over their objections, for at least a period of time.