After NYT Subpoenas, Senate Dems Urged to Oppose Clayton for Trump Spy Chief
"Rewarding an official who is actively executing the White House's war on an independent press with the keys to the intelligence community would be a catastrophic mistake."
A coalition of progressive groups is pressuring Senate Democrats to oppose President Donald Trump's nomination of Jay Clayton III to lead America's spy agencies over his role in helping the administration use the legal system to attack journalists.
Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Clayton, who currently serves as the US attorney for Manhattan, had issued subpoenas to four of its journalists after they'd reported on security concerns related to the luxury jet gifted by the Qatari government, which Trump has begun to use in place of Air Force One against the wishes of the Secret Service.
The US Department of Justice said in a statement that the goal of the investigation was to prosecute leakers who spoke to the press about the plane's lacking security features. According to the Times, the FBI requested that it hold off publishing the story and reveal the names of its anonymous sources, which it refused to do.
A top newsroom lawyer for the Times described the subpoenas as "an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
On Monday, the group Demand Progress and nearly three dozen other progressive advocacy groups sent a letter to Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.).
It urged them to oppose the nomination of Clayton to serve as director of national intelligence, a role previously held by Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned in May.
"The committee need not speculate how Clayton would exercise the enormous powers of the federal government: He is demonstrating it now," the coalition wrote. "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."
"Rewarding an official who is actively executing the White House's war on an independent press with the keys to the intelligence community would be a catastrophic mistake," the letter continued.
The coalition emphasized that Clayton, whose confirmation hearing in the Senate is scheduled for Wednesday, has no experience in intelligence work, having spent most of his career as a corporate lawyer on Wall Street. He was tapped to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump's first term and then to serve as US attorney for the Southern District of New York in his second.
"More troublingly," it said, "Clayton has spent his time in this position weaponizing his authority on behalf of the president, particularly by politicizing high-profile investigations."
As Trump came under fire for his relationship with the late child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, Clayton was assigned to "take the lead" of a Department of Justice probe that selectively targeted a list of the president's enemies.
Clayton also oversaw the process of redacting files related to Epstein before their release to the public, which was met with criticism for including identifying information of abuse survivors, including nude photos, while blacking out the names of Trump and other prominent individuals despite a mandate from Congress.
The letter also notes Clayton's amplifying of Trump's debunked theories of election fraud in California as part of efforts to restrict mail-in voting, as well as his defense of Trump's $1.8 billion "slush fund," which a judge ruled this week constituted an improper act of self-dealing.
"We are living with the serious consequences of unqualified Trump loyalists, blindly pursuing the "MAGA" agenda at agencies like the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Education, Health and Human Services, and more," the letter concludes. "Adding the [intelligence community] to this list—especially in light of Clayton's shocking willingness to weaponize federal power to satisfy the president's political grievances... will have devastating consequences for our national security and the civil liberties of Americans."
