As acting DNI, Bill Pulte lives up to his reputation with partisan political antics

At this point two weeks ago, Senate Republicans appeared eager to advance a specific plan. Days earlier, Donald Trump announced his plan to nominate Jay Clayton to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence, and GOP leaders said the federal prosecutor was so uncontroversial that they hoped to confirm him by the end of the week, in a rare display of congressional efficiency.

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The president, however, didn’t want the Senate to confirm his own DNI nominee. Instead, Trump wanted his other choice — Bill Pulte, the highly controversial director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — to take the reins as the acting DNI.

He didn’t go into a lot of detail as to why Pulte’s appointment was such a priority, though Trump did recently declare that he expects Pulte to use his new office to perhaps “find out some things about the rigged elections,” reinforcing obvious concerns about the unqualified housing official playing the role of a partisan weapon in pursuit of Trump’s conspiracy theories.

So, how was Pulte’s first week on the job? Painfully predictable.

As last week got underway, The New York Times and NBC News separately reported that the acting DNI had already begun firing intelligence officials. Soon after, MS NOW’s David Rohde reported that Pulte, instead of trying “calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” had instead created what top officials described as “chaotic” new conditions.

Days later, Pulte installed Christina Norton, a former Republican National Committee official with a background in elections issues, as his chief of staff. MS NOW’s Rohde explained:

[Pulte] has stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election operative who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The staffer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.

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“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”

Even by 2026 standards, these circumstances are increasingly ridiculous. Pulte is a shameless presidential sycophant who has been accurately described as a “Trump sidekick,” whom some administration officials have labeled “Little Trump” because of his partisan efforts and obsessive use of social media. More importantly, to an almost cartoonish degree, Pulte has taken it upon himself to target one White House foe after another, weaponizing mortgage fraud allegations against the president’s perceived political enemies, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.