By Patricia Zengerle, Jonathan Landay and Luc Cohen
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the top U.S. spy, Jay Clayton, refused on Wednesday to directly acknowledge that the Republican president lost the 2020 election despite repeated questioning by Democrats in his Senate confirmation hearing.
Trump “isn’t in the room today,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona told Clayton. “If you can’t disagree with him when he’s not in the room, are you going to be able to disagree with him when you’re sitting across from him?”
Propelled by Trump’s claims that U.S. elections are “rigged” and his refusal to accept his 2020 electoral loss to Democrat Joe Biden, the administration has sought to increase federal oversight of U.S. elections. Legal experts say such an effort would take power away from states in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Clayton said only that Biden had been “certified” as president, while saying, “I am not an election denier.”
Trump will deliver a national address on Thursday night about newly declassified intelligence on U.S. elections and what the White House calls voting machine vulnerabilities.
Clayton’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination to serve as director of national intelligence led to shouting when he repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Biden had been elected in 2020.
Pressed by Kelly on whether the winner was the person certified as the victor by Congress and who had the most electoral votes, Clayton said: “I think that’s your characterization. I’m really, I’m not going to continue.”
Lawmakers also questioned Clayton about his recent subpoenas of New York Times journalists in his current role as the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan.
Wednesday’s hearing was the second for Clayton scheduled by the intelligence panel, after Trump last month ordered the abrupt postponement of his first one to put pressure on Congress to pass a contested package of election restrictions known as the SAVE America Act.
That measure remains stalled because it lacks enough votes to pass the Senate. Voting rights groups say it would disenfranchise millions of Americans with no ready access to passports and birth certificates.
Democrats had seemed amenable to confirming Clayton, hoping to quickly replace the acting DNI, Bill Pulte, a close Trump ally and Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who lacks national security and intelligence experience. Pulte replaced Tulsi Gabbard, who left the job in June.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the committee’s Republican chairman, said he intended to hold a vote early next week on Clayton’s nomination and send it for consideration by the full Senate.
POLITICIZING INTELLIGENCE?
Lawmakers questioned Clayton about subpoenas he issued on Friday ordering New York Times journalists to testify before a federal grand jury after reporting on security concerns involving Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The newspaper described the move as “an extraordinary escalation” in Trump’s efforts to intimidate journalists, a view echoed by some senators. The Justice Department said it was not aimed at journalists but at officials leaking sensitive information.
Clayton said the subpoenas were “in connection with an ongoing national security investigation,” and that they were issued as part of a “consultative process” with career prosecutors in his office.
“I’m absolutely committed to and respect our First Amendment and the role of the press,” Clayton said, adding that he did not want to discuss the case in detail.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s senior Democrat, called on Clayton to refrain from what Warner charged were “repeated attempts” to politicize intelligence by Gabbard and Pulte.
The director of national intelligence, overseer of the 18-agency U.S. intelligence community, acts as the president’s top intelligence adviser, and is expected to be nonpartisan and to present and defend intelligence analyses that may not support the views of the Oval Office.
Warner said one of his greatest concerns was how Pulte might misuse extremely sensitive intelligence about U.S. elections that he is expected to declassify for Trump’s address on Thursday.
“I just don’t understand how Mr. Pulte … can end up figuring out what is appropriate or not appropriate (to declassify) since he’s been in the job for only three weeks,” Warner said.
Clayton said he was not involved in preparations for Trump’s speech.
Clayton lacks extensive traditional intelligence agency experience, but said he has worked on security matters while chairing the Securities and Exchange Commission and as Manhattan U.S. Attorney, a position in which he has been handling the prosecution of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Since assuming his acting position last month, Pulte has announced repeated rounds of staff reductions, as some Republicans urge the elimination of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Clayton pushed back, saying there was a need for a “focal point for coordination across the other 17 intelligence agencies.” But he added that ODNI should “probably pull back” from involvement in operations and from functions performed by other agencies.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Jonathan Landay and Luc Cohen; Editing by Don Durfee, Edmund Klamann, Philippa Fletcher, Rod Nickel)
