Trump Intel Pick Says He Only Learned of Key Investigation Yesterday

Answers given by Jay Clayton, Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, in his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday suggest that, if confirmed, he would be a pawn in the president’s election-meddling pursuits in the vein of former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff pressed Clayton about Gabbard’s presence at a February FBI raid at a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility. The operation was based on Trump’s debunked election fraud claims. And her attendance—at the president’s request, she has said—ignited a scandal, as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s role in election security is to counter foreign threats, rather than be weaponized for domestic, partisan ends.

Clayton prevaricated when asked about his familiarity with the Fulton County incident, claiming, to Ossoff’s dismay, that he had only learned about the raid the day before, when he met privately with the senator.

Ossoff then asked if Clayton would comply with a similar request from the president: “If the White House chief of staff or the president asks you to travel somewhere across the United States and oversee the execution of a domestic search warrant on a sensitive election facility, will you do it?” the senator asked. “Is that appropriate for the director of national intelligence?”

Clayton threw his hands up. “Um … that’s a hypothetical.” Pressed further, he declined to comment on the matter.

“Disqualifying,” Ossoff replied.

Moments later, Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chastised Clayton for his waffling.

“It strains credibility to think that you are not aware of Director Gabbard’s intervention in the domestic election activities in Fulton County, and that that was subject of a great deal of consternation and review,” Warner told the nominee. “Even if you weren’t aware, in preparation for this hearing, I would’ve thought, ‘Hey, we gotta be ready for the Gabbard questions.’”

Clayton mustered a far from reassuring response: “To be clear, the ODNI’s role is principally outside of the United States.”

Also in his heated exchange with Ossoff, as well as with other senators, Clayton, like countless other Trump nominees before him, avoided saying that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, instead opting for weasel words so as not to contradict the president’s election denialism.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to claim at his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday that he was committed to meeting with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, but quickly backtracked. 

“When it comes to the victims of this horrible man, we will never, never not talk to victims. We will never not do everything we can to prosecute anybody that committed any crimes against any of these women,” Blanche told the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

But when pressed by Democratic Senator Richard Durbin on why he hasn’t met with Epstein survivors yet, and whether he’ll commit to doing so in the next 30 days, he struggled to answer. 

“If they have lawyers, as you know. I’m prohibited from meeting directly with them,” Blanche said. “I have met with counsel for survivors, as have many people in the Department of Justice. But if they are represented by counsel, we will work with their counsel.”

“It can get done as soon as today. It could have gotten done last week. We remain available to meet with any victim at any time.”

That’s not what Epstein’s survivors say. In May, Blanche said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that he had met with survivors and their lawyers, drawing an immediate statement from 18 of Epstein’s victims, who said he was lying. 

“Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not met with any of us. As survivors, we previously sought a meeting with former Attorney General Bondi and Department of Justice officials, but no meeting occurred,” the survivors said. “We should not have to be this persistent to engage with DOJ—the department responsible for handling the Epstein files, protecting their privacy, and answering for years of secrecy and failure.”

Last month, 19 victims came out publicly against Blanche’s attorney general nomination after a New York Times report revealed he was among the Trump administration officials who met in the White House Situation Room to discuss how to respond to public pressure for more transparency on the government’s Epstein files.  

These survivors have multiple grievances against Blanche for inconsistent redactions on the released files, which have put some of them in danger after exposing their names, personal information, and illicit photos.

“We are especially concerned that Todd Blanche, the person nominated for the highest law enforcement position in the country, was at that table. Blanche has consistently minimized legitimate concerns about how the files have been handled, including problematic redactions and the exposure of survivors’ personal information. Blanche failed to deliver transparency, and he has gravely failed survivors. This is failing upward, plain and simple,” the women said last month. 

Republican Senator John Cornyn directed serious concerns about the status of President Trump’s “anti-weaponization” slush fund to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

In a series of well-directed questions, the Texas senator undermined the very basis of the settlement agreement resolving the Trump family’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over Trump’s leaked tax returns, which created the slush fund.

“There’s so much that’s unusual about this,” Cornyn said. “[The leaked tax returns] happened back in 2020, and the lawsuit wasn’t brought until 2026, so with the two-year statute of limitations … that struck me as unusual.”

Cornyn then moved on to the text of the settlement agreement.

“On page four: ‘This settlement agreement … may be modified only upon the written agreement of the parties’ Has there been a written agreement of the parties to modify the settlement fund?”

“No, the settlement fund is just not moving forward,” Blanche replied. “There’s no modification. It’s just it never started. No money went from the Treasury to any other account. There’s no commissioners. It’s not moving forward.”

“Is the settlement agreement enforceable as a contract by the parties?”

“Well, yes, it’s an enforceable document,” Blanche conceded. “So I suppose if President Trump’s counsel sought to enforce it, that they potentially could.”

“Including the weaponization fund,” Cornyn said, making the obvious connection.

“Well, they could try to enforce the contract. They can’t force the Department of Justice to move forward with the weaponization fund. They could potentially say that, I suppose, that we breached by not moving forward. They haven’t done that, and I’m not aware that they’re planning on doing that,” Blanche replied.

Cornyn then asked directly what Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, had been avoiding.

“But just to be clear, the president of the United States, who was the plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund, and there’s no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by way of a lawsuit and a breach of contract lawsuit in the future?”

“Well, senator, the plaintiffs have no power over the fund. The fund was administered solely by the five commissioners and through the Department of Justice. So no, they don’t have any power with respect to the fund at all. I suppose they could bring a lawsuit, and then we would litigate it. But even if we were litigating it, there’s no fund, so the results of such litigation, whatever it would be, wouldn’t be a revival of the fund.”

Blanche can say how dead the slush fund is as much as he wants, but that won’t convince anyone until it’s actually in writing, which it isn’t. It’s a bad look for Blanche when even Republicans realize that.

Six years later, Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election conspiracy is still going strong.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, Trump’s pick to run National Intelligence—Jay Clayton—refused to plainly acknowledge who won the 2020 election, admitting only after a lengthy back-and-forth with Maine Senator Angus King that Joe Biden “became the president of the United States.”

Clayton initially said Biden had been certified, during an exchange with committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner. But he grew testy when King revisited the subject.

“Who won the 2020 election?” asked King.

“I’ve answered that question, I’m not going to get into that,” Clayton rebuffed, throwing his hands in the air.

“You have not answered that question,” insisted King. “Who won the 2020 election? It’s a pretty simple question.”

“I’ll give you the same answer. My answer to the chairman was, he asked me if I’m an election denier. I’m not an election denier. Joe Biden was certified as the president, he went through his process, he went through our electoral process. I can tell you that I was in my seat at the FCC and—” Clayton said, before King again insisted that he answer the question.

“Who won the 2020 election?” repeated King.

“As I said, he went through our processes, and Joe Biden became the president of the United States,” Clayton said.

“I’m going to ask you one more time—” King said, before Clayton interjected that he had only appeared on the Capitol to “talk about my qualifications.”

“One of your qualifications is you told us you’re going to hold truth to power, and you won’t answer a very simple question,” King said. “You have not answered. Saying Joe Biden was certified is not an answer.”

Later in the hearing, Senator Mark Kelly picked up where King left off, asking Clayton “why Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 election.”

“I really—going back to my constitutional law here—I don’t want to get in a debate about this, but I believe he had the most electoral votes,” Clayton responded.

“So he won the election?” pressed Kelly.

“He followed our process, had the most electoral votes, was declared the winner,” Clayton continued, laughing.

“And who has the most electoral votes? Is it the person who wins, or the person that loses?” asked Kelly.

“I think that’s your characterization,” Clayton shrugged.

When Senator Jon Ossoff again brought up the topic, Clayton stopped trying to answer altogether.

“Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?” Ossoff pressed. But Clayton was unmoved.

Donald Trump shrugged off the U.S. strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, in February, which killed nearly 200 people, most of them schoolchildren.

The official investigation into that incident remains under wraps. Democratic senators have urged its release, while the Pentagon has stated that an investigation remains ongoing. Officially, the United States has refused to accept responsibility for its attack. But according to various media reports, American officials and investigators behind the scenes have acknowledged U.S. forces’ culpability.

In a Fox News interview aired Tuesday, the president was asked whether the investigation’s findings would be released. Trump did not answer the question, inspiring little confidence that they will ever see the light of day. 

Instead, he did his best to avoid accountability and paint the clear-cut atrocity in shades of gray.

“I don’t think anybody’s gonna ever be able to say what happened there,” the president said. “Because if they don’t know by now, and as of a couple of weeks ago they didn’t know, and while things like that happen in war, there were missiles flying all over the place. And I don’t know how anybody could say that we shot it.”

Trump’s previous statements have, similarly, cast doubt on the prospect of accountability for the Minab school attack. Asked about the attack last month, Trump said, “We’re talking about a long time ago. Nobody did that on purpose.… Mistakes are made. War is nasty.” He  then punted the issue of a published report on the incident to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.