Trump Appoints Millennial Heir as Acting Intel Chief, Plans Agency Downsizing

President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his decision to appoint a millennial heir to a homebuilding fortune with zero national security experience as temporary Director of National Intelligence and said the agency will be gutted to the bare minimum before he nominates a permanent replacement for outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard, the ex-Hawaii House Democrat who is resigning to care for her husband while he is treated for bone cancer, was set to depart the administration at the end of June. But in a Truth Social post, Trump said her interim replacement, Federal Housing Finance Administrator Bill Pulte, would start as acting intel chief on June 19 with orders “to execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office” by “reverting staff to their home agencies.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said unnamed “people” have wanted ODNI “downsized for a long time” and suggested the office “has a lot of duplication.”

The relatively small agency was established after the 9/11 terror attacks with the Director of National Intelligence as its’ head to direct and oversee U.S. intelligence programs and serve as the executive in charge of the U.S. Intelligence Community, a role previously held in practice by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

But during Trump’s second term, it has enjoyed relatively little influence due to Gabbard’s well-known isolationist and anti-interventionist views making her an outlier within Trump’s inner circle.

Her lack of influence has benefited her predecessor in Trump’s first administration, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who has taken on many day-to-day responsibilities that are supposed to be in the DNI’s purview.

Yet the president’s choice of Pulte flies in the face of the law governing the office, which requires that the DNI must have extensive national security experience.

The 38-year-old FHFA head has none and it is not known whether he possesses or could normally obtain the requisite security clearance needed for the role.

His lack of qualifications and his reputation as a Trump loyalist has led Senate Democrats to balk at reauthorizing a key surveillance authority, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires at the end of this week.

While Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was asking Congress for a “short-term extension” of the law while he vets a permanent replacement for Gabbard, it’s not known whether Democrats — or even a majority of Republicans — will go along.

Pulte has displayed unwavering loyalty to Trump and, over the last year, used government housing paperwork to accuse Trump’s perceived political enemies of engaging in criminal behavior through mortgage fraud.

His actions have raised alarm bells with lawmakers who fear Pulte’s access to sensitive intelligence could allow him to push Trump’s politically motivated agenda.

But Trump said Pulte’s lack of experience wasn’t as important as the fact that he’s “smart.”

“I would say this: He's going to be there for a short while while we pick somebody else. We're interviewing five different people, they're all very good, very different, and we'll put somebody there. But people want it downsized, the senators and the congresspeople. I think everybody wants it downsized,” he said.