Trump names controversial top housing official to be acting director of national intelligence

By Zachary Cohen, Hannah Rabinowitz, Aileen Graef, CNN

(CNN) — Donald Trump on Tuesday named housing official Bill Pulte, who has played a leading role in stoking the president’s retribution campaign, as acting director of national intelligence.

Pulte — a wealthy businessman turned Federal Housing Finance Agency director — appears to be an unusual choice given his lack of demonstrated experience in national intelligence.

But he has served as an unlikely political attack dog against the Federal Reserve and many of Trump’s perceived political enemies. He also meets the criteria to serve in an acting role given the Senate confirmed him to his role as chief of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Still, the president’s decision to move Pulte into the intelligence job already has some Trump allies scratching their heads.

“Building homes is very similar to managing a 17-agency US intelligence community,” one former Trump official sarcastically responded when asked about Pulte’s qualifications for the role.

In a Truth Social post announcing the appointment, Trump cited Pulte’s “deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago.”

From his office at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte played an extraordinary role in pushing the Justice Department to pursue some of its most eye-popping cases against the president’s personal foes.

He referred New York Attorney General Letitia James, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Sen. Adam Schiff and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — all Democrats who have gone head-to-head with the president — to the department to investigate them for mortgage fraud.

He also referred Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over similar fraud claims.

All five people have denied Pulte’s allegations, and only the probe into James resulted in charges, although they were later thrown out by a federal judge.

Still, those referrals led to widespread accusations that the Trump administration was using the justice system to exact revenge. The Government Accountability Office even opened an investigation into Pulte over possible misuse of authority.

As acting DNI, Pulte could similarly use the information available to him — in this case, in an intelligence role — to refer cases to the Justice Department for prosecution. While in the post, DNI Tulsi Gabbard made at least one criminal referral, seeking investigations of a whistleblower complaint and its handling by a watchdog that led to Trump’s 2019 impeachment. That complaint turned into a far-reaching criminal investigation run out of the US attorney’s office in Miami.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, quickly blasted Pulte’s appointment to the role.

“This appointment speaks volumes about what this president expects from the nation’s top intelligence official,” Warner said in a statement. “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.”

Vice President JD Vance said on X that Pulte will do “great,” citing that he “recognizes that the bureaucracy of the intel community must respond to the elected leadership (rather than the other way around).”

This is not the first time Trump has tapped a loyalist with little-to-no intelligence community experience to serve as acting DNI. During his first term, Trump named his ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell, to fill the same role despite a similar lack of experience. At the time, a former White House official told CNN that Trump was “looking for a ‘political’ who will have his back.”

In his Truth Social post, Trump added that Pulte would also remain in his current roles until a permanent DNI head — which would require Senate confirmation — is named.

It comes after Gabbard announced at the end of May that she would step down as director of national intelligence, citing her husband’s diagnosis of a rare form of bone cancer.

Trump selected Gabbard as his top intelligence official thanks to her non-interventionist, “America First” ideology that had pushed her away from the Democratic Party and into the MAGA fold.

But as Trump’s director of national intelligence, Gabbard’s isolationist tendencies quickly put her at odds with his military actions in Iran and Venezuela.

Months before announcing her resignation, Gabbard was routinely sidelined from some of the biggest foreign policy decisions of Trump’s second term. Instead, much of her focus revolved around rooting out actors she thought were part of the so-called deep state — people in the intelligence community who the president suspected were working against his interests.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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