President Trump bigfooted Senate Republicans into postponing Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton’s confirmation hearing Wednesday in a convoluted effort to push his stalled election integrity bill.
Mr. Clayton was scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon, but that morning, Mr. Trump said the hearing must be canceled.
“Republicans fell into a trap” by agreeing to speed through Mr. Clayton’s confirmation without getting anything in return, the president said on social media.
He laid out a series of demands, which include leveraging Mr. Clayton’s nomination and renewal of a lapsed spy authority to pass the GOP’s election integrity bill, the SAVE America Act.
Republican congressional leaders had already rebuffed Mr. Trump’s plan to tie the election bill to the spy law and now have to decide how far they are willing to go to push back against the president.
Mr. Trump told reporters that Republicans can send him the SAVE America Act “any way they want to pass it, but I’m not going to sign FISA unless it’s done.”
He was referring to legislation reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that allows the government to spy on foreign targets’ communications without a warrant.
The spy authority lapsed last week as Democrats filibustered both short- and long-term FISA extensions.
Democrats are protesting Mr. Trump’s decision to appoint William J. Pulte to serve as acting DNI as Tulsi Gabbard exits the role to help her husband through cancer treatment.
Republicans believed quickly confirming Mr. Clayton as the permanent DNI before Mr. Pulte could start the acting job on Friday would unlock the Democratic votes needed to renew FISA.
Mr. Trump’s decision to slow Mr. Clayton’s confirmation and use FISA as leverage to pass the SAVE America Act threatens to extend the impasse over a key intelligence tool used to thwart terrorist plots.
Republicans, however, are not convinced Mr. Trump will follow through on his threat.
“I don’t know that he wouldn’t sign FISA,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. “I know he said that, but he’s said that about a lot of other things.”
The South Dakota Republican said he still puts ownership of the FISA lapse and any potential consequences of that on Democrats, not Mr. Trump.
“The Democrats playing politics with something like this to me is inexcusable,” Mr. Thune said. “Is this a complicating factor? Yeah. But it still, in my view, does not give them any justification or rationale for turning the lights off of FISA, which is a critically important national security tool.”
Democrats argue that it is Mr. Trump who has been undermining national security for political reasons, starting with naming Mr. Pulte as acting DNI.
Lawmakers in both parties have complained that Mr. Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, lacks the national security experience.
Democrats are also concerned that Mr. Pulte could use the DNI role to target the president’s political enemies after using confidential records under his housing finance agency’s purview to accuse Democrats of committing mortgage fraud.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Mr. Trump “seems determined to turn America’s national security into a political bargaining chip” by pulling back on Mr. Clayton’s nomination and making “a voter disenfranchisement law that does not have the votes” a prerequisite to renewing FISA.
“This is a careless White House, a president that is treating our national security with complete disdain, acting at a level that puts Americans at risk,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump may be trying to distract from a peace deal with Iran that falls short of his stated objectives for going to war.
Mr. Trump said he wanted to slow down Mr. Clayton’s confirmation because he felt Republicans were getting rolled by Democrats seeking to block Mr. Pulte.
“They were doing a rush act and we didn’t get anything for it,” he said.
Senate Republicans briefly pushed back after Mr. Trump tried to unilaterally cancel Mr. Clayton’s confirmation hearing.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, said he would proceed unless the president withdrew the nomination or directed Mr. Clayton not to appear.
Mr. Trump opted for the latter, which the chairman called “regrettable.”
“Mr. Clayton is a patriot and a highly qualified nominee, as the president has said repeatedly,” Mr. Cotton said. “While today’s hearing is now unfortunately postponed, I look forward to proceeding with his confirmation in the near future.”
Mr. Trump’s move ensures that Mr. Pulte will take over as acting DNI on Friday as planned.
The president tasked Mr. Pulte with downsizing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 disparate intel agencies.
He said Mr. Pulte will remain acting DNI “as long as it takes to get everybody else approved.”
The president said he does not want to remove Mr. Clayton as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York until his nominee to replace him in that role, Jamie McDonald, is confirmed.
However, the Senate cannot confirm someone to a role for which there is no vacancy.
“To add a slight bit of intrigue,” Mr. Trump said, he would also add the SAVE America Act among his demands for replacing Mr. Pulte and renewing FISA.
The House-passed SAVE America Act requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot.
Mr. Trump is pushing for an expanded version that would also ban states from automatically sending out mail-in ballots to all registered voters and block biological men from playing in women’s sports and “transgender mutilation” procedures on children.
That version lacks enough GOP support to pass either chamber, let alone clear a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
Attaching the SAVE America Act to FISA would effectively kill the bill, as GOP leaders have made clear to Mr. Trump.
“We will never pass the SAVE Act, never – it is so damaging to our democracy,” Mr. Schumer said, calling Mr. Trump an “embarrassment” to Republicans who are searching for a path forward on FISA.
Instead of turning on Mr. Trump, Republicans are fighting amongst themselves about the SAVE America Act.
Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee, the bill’s lead author, said Republicans have enough support to clear the House-passed version of the bill but are unwilling to enforce a talking filibuster that would require Democrats to exhaust debate on the floor.
Such a move theoretically allows for a simple-majority vote on the bill as opposed to the 60 needed to clear a filibuster by cutting off debate. However, a talking filibuster would likely require other procedural and policy votes that Republicans could have trouble defeating.
Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, took a veiled shot at Mr. Lee after a closed-door GOP lunch where the FISA-SAVE America Act dilemma was discussed.
“I think part of the problem is not President Trump, it’s us making unrealistic promises, and then when they’re not attained, then criticizing one another,” he said.
• Kerry Picket contributed to this report.
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