Trump’s DNI pick grilled about election security, voter fraud

Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, on Wednesday sought to allay concerns about his independence, while offering muddled answers on who won the 2020 election and past statements about voter fraud.

Pressed at his confirmation hearing by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resisted taking firm stands on election security matters that have divided Capitol Hill and could offend Trump, including whether Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race.

“I am bitterly disappointed. We've tried umpteen different ways to give you the ability to just acknowledge that Joe Biden was the president,” Mark Warner (VA), the panel’s top Democrat, said near the end of the roughly two-hour session.

The remarks came after several contentious exchanges over who won the Oval Office nearly six years ago.

"We went through our processes and Joe Biden became the president of the United States,” Clayton, who chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration, said in response to such a question from Sen. Angus King (I-ME).

“One of your qualifications is you told us you’re going to tell the truth to power and you won’t answer a very simple question,” King, who caucuses with Democrats, replied. “Saying Joe Biden was certified is not an answer.”

Election security has been a major concern for many Democrats ahead of November's midterms. They fear Clayton could assist Trump’s long-running effort of undermining the outcomes of previous, and future, elections. 

The president is set to deliver a prime-time national address on Thursday that is widely expected to rehash his still unproven claims of fraud in his 2020 race against Biden.

“It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” Trump said on Tuesday. “We’ll be discussing other things too, but it’s going to be a very big announcement.”

Clayton, who claimed he has no insight into what Trump will say, was grilled about previous statements he has made about voter fraud — even though experts have said there has been no evidence of widespread fraud at the ballot box.

The “audit trail that we have available for our elections in a number of places is not the kind of audit trail that you would expect in something that is this important,” he said at one point.

“I'm a big believer that we can have better access than we've ever had before, and better integrity than we've ever had before, and some of the constructs around our election, the integrity can be greatly improved,” Clayton told the committee.

He was also asked about his decision to subpoena several journalists for their reporting on the Air Force One airplane Qatar gifted to Trump, with several policymakers viewing it as an intimidation tactic and an assault on free speech.

“I understand your concerns. I am comfortable with where we are and I'm comfortable with how we are proceeding from here,” Clayton told Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).

Recent controversies aside, the hearing largely glanced over the national security threats posed by Russia, China and others, as well as ongoing efforts to shrink the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 

There was no substantive discussion of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lapsed last month. 

Lawmakers had worked for months to renew the statute, which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to gather the digital communications of foreigners overseas without a warrant, but negotiations blew up after Trump named federal housing official Bill Pulte to be acting DNI. 

Pulte, an ardent Trump loyalist with no military or intelligence experience, gained prominence for targeting the president’s critics with mortgage fraud accusations. He has fired or reassigned scores of intelligence officials, all with the president’s blessing.

In written responses to a panel questionnaire, Clayton said he wants to understand “how we can minimize the detrimental impact to our national security caused by the lapse in 702 authorities.”