Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) clarified his stance on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Jay Clayton, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence.
In a brief hallway interview, the Washington Examiner asked Cassidy about his stance on Clayton following Trump’s tapping of him for the nation’s top intelligence post, during which the senator expressed disapproval.
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Following the publication of the senator’s remarks, Cassidy posted a statement on X saying he misheard the question and thought he was being asked about top housing official Bill Pulte, who is set to serve as acting DNI starting on June 19.
“I misheard her and assumed she meant Pulte, since the conversation was about news that had broken minutes before,” the statement reads. “This is not my position on Clayton.”
During the original interview Thursday afternoon, Cassidy, referring to Pulte, said the nomination was a “very poor choice.”
“He has been shown that he’ll weaponize personal information to attack an American citizen,” Cassidy said. “I’m a conservative. That should not be what government does. So I strongly disagree.”
When asked if he would oppose the nomination, Cassidy, who is not a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “We’ll see if he makes it.”
It is not clear whether the senator will support Clayton’s nomination.
Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was tasked in 2025 with leading the federal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s relationships with several prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman.
He also recently said voters were right to question the election results coming out of California.
Cassidy’s opposition to Pulte comes one month after he was boxed out of the Louisiana Senate primary by Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and state Treasurer John Fleming. In his concession speech last month, Cassidy suggested he could be more willing to buck Trump in the final months of his tenure.
Trump nominated Clayton for DNI in a Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon, after the House failed to pass a short-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act set to expire on Friday. A Senate attempt to pass a brief extension through unanimous consent also failed.
The president called on the Senate to confirm Clayton “as soon as possible” and asserted that “Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay.”
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters that the upper chamber will try to get Clayton confirmed “as quickly as possible,” noting he has been processed by the Senate before.
It is unclear how much opposition Clayton will face in the Senate, where he will first have to be processed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with fresh comment from Cassidy, who misheard the Washington Examiner when asked if he supported the nomination of Clayton.
