At this point two weeks ago, Senate Republicans appeared eager to advance a specific plan. Days earlier, Donald Trump announced his plan to nominate Jay Clayton to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence, and GOP leaders said the federal prosecutor was so uncontroversial that they hoped to confirm him by the end of the week, in a rare display of congressional efficiency.

The president, however, didn’t want the Senate to confirm his own DNI nominee. Instead, Trump wanted his other choice — Bill Pulte, the highly controversial director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — to take the reins as the acting DNI.

He didn’t go into a lot of detail as to why Pulte’s appointment was such a priority, though Trump did recently declare that he expects Pulte to use his new office to perhaps “find out some things about the rigged elections,” reinforcing obvious concerns about the unqualified housing official playing the role of a partisan weapon in pursuit of Trump’s conspiracy theories.

So, how was Pulte’s first week on the job? Painfully predictable.

As last week got underway, The New York Times and NBC News separately reported that the acting DNI had already begun firing intelligence officials. Soon after, MS NOW’s David Rohde reported that Pulte, instead of trying “calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” had instead created what top officials described as “chaotic” new conditions.

Days later, Pulte installed Christina Norton, a former Republican National Committee official with a background in elections issues, as his chief of staff. MS NOW’s Rohde explained:

[Pulte] has stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election operative who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The staffer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.

“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”

Even by 2026 standards, these circumstances are increasingly ridiculous. Pulte is a shameless presidential sycophant who has been accurately described as a “Trump sidekick,” whom some administration officials have labeled “Little Trump” because of his partisan efforts and obsessive use of social media. More importantly, to an almost cartoonish degree, Pulte has taken it upon himself to target one White House foe after another, weaponizing mortgage fraud allegations against the president’s perceived political enemies, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

Complicating matters, MS NOW reported last fall that a federal grand jury investigated whether Pulte illegally shared sensitive information with unauthorized people.

For the president to appoint him as the acting DNI, so he can do “some things” related to Trump’s election conspiracy theories, was bonkers. For Pulte to then add a Republican National Committee official as his ODNI chief of staff lends fresh credence to obvious concerns that Pulte’s focus is less on overseeing intelligence agencies — given his background, that’s a task he wouldn’t know how to perform anyway — and more on pursuing electoral objectives with U.S. intelligence.

In case this weren’t quite enough, there are also lingering questions about whether Pulte is even eligible for the office he now holds. The Atlantic reported last week, “[T]he act of Congress that created the position he now holds seems unambiguous: ‘The Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence shall act for, and exercise the powers of’ the DNI when that position is vacant, as it is now. Not ‘may’ serve. Shall. The current principal deputy is Aaron Lukas, a career intelligence officer who is not only available to serve but has extensive national-security experience, which is another thing that the law requires.”

With Clayton’s nomination on ice and the Senate out for an Independence Day break, Pulte remains free to engage in additional antics, despite these unresolved legal concerns. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post As acting DNI, Bill Pulte lives up to his reputation with partisan political antics appeared first on MS NOW.

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