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Jay Clayton, President Trump’s nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, repeatedly refused to say Joe Biden won the 2020 election during a contentious Senate confirmation hearing.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, the DNI sits on top of all 18 of the country’s spy agencies and is the president’s go-to adviser on all things intelligence, a job Congress cooked up after 9/11. Clayton, a former SEC chairman who currently runs the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, is seen as a more conventional pick than acting DNI Bill Pulte, a Trump ally with no intelligence experience who’s been accused of using his previous post as housing finance chief to launch investigations into Trump’s perceived enemies.
What’s going on now: During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Democrats pressed Clayton over and over on a single question, and he never gave a direct answer. He acknowledged that Biden was “certified” as the winner and insisted “I am not an election denier,” but stopped short of saying outright that Biden won.
When Sen. Jon Ossoff asked point-blank who won, Clayton said “I’m not going to do this with you” and eventually sat in silence. When Sen. Mark Kelly walked him through the Electoral College math, Clayton said only that Biden “followed our process, had the most electoral votes, was declared the winner,” and dismissed the conclusion that this meant he won as “your characterization.”
For the record, Biden was declared the winner in the 2020 election with 306 electoral votes compared to Trump’s 232, and took the popular vote by roughly 7 million ballots. Trump has never conceded and continues to claim that the race was stolen, despite failed lawsuits.
Clayton also defended the subpoenas his office issued to four New York Times reporters over their reporting on Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One, saying he was “confident in procedures we have in place to protect freedom of press” but declining to say whether he’d spoken to the White House.
Democrats who had once seemed open to his nomination turned against him. Sen. Mark Warner said he was “bitterly disappointed,” Ossoff described Clayton’s answers as “disqualifying,” and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the performance “abysmal.” Sen. Kelly argued that a nominee who can’t disagree with Trump when he’s not even in the room won’t stand up to him in the Situation Room.
Despite this, Republicans on the committee stood behind him. Chairman Tom Cotton praised Clayton’s reputation for operating with “morality, decency and integrity” in his previous roles and said he hoped the nomination would win bipartisan support.
