Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) rebuked President Donald Trump’s pick of Jay Clayton, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence.
“I think he’s a very poor choice,” Cassidy told the Washington Examiner. “He has been shown that he’ll weaponize personal information to attack an American citizen. I’m a conservative. That should not be what government does. So I strongly disagree.”
Cassidy’s opposition to Clayton’s nomination comes one month after he was boxed out of the Louisiana Senate primary by Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and state Treasurer John Fleming. In his concession speech last month, Cassidy suggested he could be more willing to buck Trump in the final months of his tenure.
Clayton, the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was tasked in 2025 with leading the federal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s relationships to several prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman.
He also recently said voters were right to question the election results coming out of California.
Trump announced Clayton as his next DNI in a Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon, after the House failed to pass a short-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act set to expire on Friday. A Senate attempt to pass a brief extension through unanimous consent also failed.
The president called on the Senate to confirm Clayton “as soon as possible” and asserted that “Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters that the upper chamber will try to get Clayton confirmed “as quickly as possible,” noting he has been processed by the Senate before.
TRUMP NAMES JAY CLAYTON AS NEXT INTELLIGENCE CHIEF AMID FISA GRIDLOCK
It’s unclear how much opposition Clayton will face in the Senate, where he will first have to be processed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
When asked if he would oppose Clayton’s nomination, Cassidy, who is not a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, “We’ll see if he makes it.”