Under the White House’s existing plan, Tulsi Gabbard will formally step down later this week as the nation’s director of national intelligence, at which point Bill Pulte, the highly controversial director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will take the reins. Soon after (if all goes according to plan), the Senate will vote to confirm U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Gabbard’s permanent successor.
But while this process unfolds, the central question on the minds of many is what, exactly, Pulte would do with the office he’s obviously unqualified to fill.
On Sunday’s episode of “Face the Nation,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Mark Warner “how much damage” Pulte could realistically do during a brief tenure. The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee didn’t hesitate.
“Having him exposed, when he doesn’t even have a security clearance, to all our nation’s classified programs, out of ignorance, he might give away information,” Warner replied. “I have had heads of our intelligence communities say to us they’re terrified of showing him information. I have had foreign governments express huge concern.”
The Virginia senator added, “The one thing we know about Bill Pulte is, he will do whatever Donald Trump says. He was able to weaponize private mortgage insurance information. Giving him the keys to the 18 intelligence agencies would be a disaster and a national security threat.”
A few hours later, responding to Warner, Trump used his social media platform to ask what U.S. intelligence agencies “have to be afraid of.” The president went on to ask online:
Why are the Dumocrats so afraid of Bill Pulte at DNI??? He would only be Acting! What do they have to be afraid of, what are they hiding? There must be something BIG, mustn’t there???
The fact that Pulte would “only” be the acting DNI is irrelevant: He’ll hold the office and have the same powers that Gabbard and her predecessors had. It’s not as if Pulte could call the CIA for a report, only to hear back, “Nah, you’re ‘only’ the acting DNI.”
But I was more interested in the president’s apparent confusion (setting aside the obvious scare-mongering of his conspiratorial insinuation). Taken at face value, he has no idea why Pulte has faced pushback, not just from Democrats, but from Republicans, U.S. intelligence officials and (as Warner noted) even foreign officials.
There’s no great mystery here.
Pulte is a shameless presidential sycophant who’s been accurately described as a “Trump sidekick,” whom some administration officials have labeled “Little Trump” because of his partisan efforts and obsessive use of social media. More importantly, to an almost cartoonish degree, Pulte has taken it upon himself to target one White House foe after another, weaponizing mortgage fraud allegations against the president’s perceived political enemies, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.