Trump taps Bill Pulte to lead intelligence, sparking surveillance clash

Donald Trump is putting Bill Pulte in charge of one of the most sensitive posts in Washington while letting him keep another. Pulte will begin serving as acting director of national intelligence on June 19, Trump said, even as he remains director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The arrangement is setting off alarm on Capitol Hill because the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sits at the center of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. The office coordinates the country’s 18 intelligence organizations and is supposed to provide leadership, budget oversight and strategic priorities across the spy agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. The DNI job is normally filled by a presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate, and the statute governing the post calls for extensive national security expertise. Pulte has no direct intelligence background.

The timing makes the move especially explosive. Tulsi Gabbard had planned to leave the DNI post on June 30, but Trump moved the transition up by more than a week. That shift landed just as Congress was trying to salvage a fragile bipartisan deal to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the surveillance authority that lets the government collect foreigners’ communications abroad and search them for Americans’ data without a warrant. The authority is set to expire on June 12.

Senate Democrats have warned that installing Pulte could make renewal harder, and lawmakers involved in the talks have treated the appointment as a new obstacle to a deal that was already under strain. Senate Intelligence Committee members had been working toward a compromise before the White House move changed the political math in Washington, and reporting said the White House was being urged to intervene to preserve the agreement.

The controversy is sharpened by Pulte’s role at housing. Trump has used him to push mortgage-related referrals for prosecution against perceived political enemies, giving Pulte a reputation as an aggressive enforcer inside an agency that touches the finances of millions of Americans. By keeping him over housing while handing him intelligence, Trump has concentrated power in two posts that sit at the intersection of finance, surveillance and political retaliation, raising the stakes for both oversight and the coming fight over spy powers.