Jay Clayton Flunked the Test
High drama ensued when Sen. Jon Ossoff began interrogating the DNI nominee
You had to wait for it. It didn’t come until nearly two hours into the all-but-scripted hearing on Jay Clayton’s nomination to be the new boss of U.S. intelligence.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee did their parts. They threw the expected jabs at Clayton, starting with the ritualized question on who won the 2020 presidential election, a Punch-and-Judy exercise every time a Trump nominee or official appears before them. None of the witnesses can muster the courage to say simply, “Joe Biden won the election.” They know a Trumpian trap door would open under them if they told the truth.
So, too, did Clayton, who entered the high ceilinged, walnut paneled, warmly lit Capitol Hill hearing room with his reputation yet unsoiled, demur. No matter that neither of his previous government stints—as Securities and Exchange commissioner in the first Trump term and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in this one—remotely qualified him for the job, which by law requires the holder have “extensive national security expertise.” His major qualification for the nomination was fealty to Trump. His major qualification for the job was that he wasn’t the guy there now, MAGA apparatchik Bill Pulte.
But Clayton quickly made clear how far he was prepared to debase himself.
