Alarm in Washington as Trump taps staunch loyalist to serve as intelligence chief

Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence has set off alarm bells in Washington, as a staunch Trump loyalist with little government experience who has shown an eagerness to retaliate against the president’s political rivals will now sit atop the US intelligence apparatus.

Pulte, whose grandfather started PulteGroup, a major residential homebuilder, had no government experience before Trump appointed him to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), an under-the-radar regulator that oversees the government lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Shortly after arriving at the agency, he began to gut it, firing sizable chunks of the boards of both and appointing himself as chair. Pulte had no government experience before being appointed to the role and does not have national intelligence experience.

Pulte’s nickname among some is “Little Trump”, the Wall Street Journal reported last year, and he made his way into the president’s orbit with a membership at Mar-a-Lago and substantial donations to Trump’s campaign groups. He has a penchant for pushing ideas, like a 50-year-mortgage, that are said to have enraged even some of Trump’s advisers. One person who had seen one of Pulte’s pitches to Trump told Politico last year that Pulte didn’t vet ideas before going straight to the president. White House officials reportedly told staffers at Trump’s golf club in Virginia not to let Pulte catch the president unattended, the Journal reported.

“Rather than selecting a respected national security professional capable of delivering independent judgments, the president has chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said in a statement. “Americans have already seen Mr. Pulte use the powers of his office at the Federal Housing Finance Agency to pursue the president’s grievances and lend credibility to dubious prosecutions of President Trump’s perceived political opponents.

“Elevating him to oversee the Intelligence Community makes clear that this president is not looking for an intelligence leader who will follow the facts or speak truth to power, but rather someone who will be willing to shape intelligence around the president’s wishes, regardless of the cost to the American people,” he added.