President Donald Trump on Wednesday complicated Senate Republican plans to quickly revive a key surveillance authority, delaying a scheduled confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton and pressing for the inclusion of a controversial voter ID measure.
Trump, in an early morning social media post, said he was “cancelling” the hearing for Clayton to become Director of National Intelligence, which was one of several moving parts in the push to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Clayton was scheduled to testify Wednesday afternoon in front of the Senate’s Intelligence panel, but Trump said that “will not be going forward until Jamie McDonald is approved to be U.S. Attorney.”
Clayton is currently leading the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Trump said in the post he did not want Clayton to leave that position until McDonald is in place.
After confusion over whether Clayton would be appearing before the committee, Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., postponed the hearing. He called it “regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today.”
“While today’s hearing is now unfortunately postponed, I look forward to proceeding with his confirmation in the near future,” Cotton said.
Senate Republicans had moved quickly to confirm Clayton as DNI in part because Trump had named Bill Pulte as acting DNI and said he would start that role Friday.
Democrats said Pulte was unfit to oversee sensitive intelligence programs and last week voted against measures that would reauthorize Section 702. The statutory authority for the program expired Friday.
Trump’s post called senators off guard, who have been working to get Clayton confirmed as soon as possible to unlock a deal on the lapsed authority, which they call a national security threat amid America 250 events and the World Cup.
“Good question,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said when asked why Trump is doing this.
“We’ll just have to take it a day at a time until we get more clarity on what the White House position is on this,” Thune said.
In the post, Trump accused Democrats of breaking a deal on Section 702 and said Bill Pulte “will remain” as the acting DNI.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said there is no paperwork or background investigation on a McDonald nomination, “and holding a hearing on it now is impossible.”
“What [Trump] is doing is just inflicting chaos. Pure and simple chaos,” Blumenthal said.
Trump also further linked his approval of Section 702 to the passage of the SAVE America Act, the GOP’s marquee voter ID and election overhaul bill.
Thune has said there are not the votes for that legislation to pass in the Senate. “It really does come down to arithmetic, you just either have the votes, or you don’t,” Thune said last week during an interview with CQ Roll Call.
“I think in this job there are a lot of things you just don’t control, and timing of White House announcements is one of them,” Thune also said. “Some of the things that have happened the last few weeks have completely thrown a wrench into our ability to execute on getting some of the things done that we need to get done. It has been particularly challenging.”
Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., said he had urged “people who were going to even vote against” Clayton to reconsider to ensure “the security risk posed by” having Pulte appointed as acting “doesn’t take place.”
“That has now been completely wrecked as well, because it is clear to me that Donald Trump really doesn’t want Section 702 renewed,” Warner said, pointing to SAVE and “the idea that he wants to force a completely unrelated piece of legislation that has no chance of passage.”
