‘Be Worried About Everything’: Hillary Clinton Sounds Alarm Over Trump’s National Security Chief

Hillary Clinton warned people should be “worried about everything when it comes to Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte.

On the Democracy Docket podcast, Marc Elias asked Clinton about concerns regarding Pulte and whether people should expect things like “election interference” to become a real problem in his new role. Pulte is President Donald Trump’s DNI pick after Tulsi Gabbard announced she was leaving the role, and critics have raised alarms about accusations Pulte has used his role at the Federal Housing Finance Agency to target Trump’s political enemies for alleged mortgage fraud. Pulte has not national security experience and will only be in the role until Trump’s actual nominee, Jay Clayton, is confirmed.

Former Secretary of State Clinton called Pulte “very dangerous” and a “loose cannon.” She also called his appointment “deeply insulting to the intelligence community,” noting Pulte has no intelligence experience.

She said:

You should definitely be worried about everything. This is a naked partisan takeover of the director of national intelligence, which was formed following 9/11 to better try to coordinate the various intelligence agencies, you know, the CIA, the NSA, there’s like 17 of them, becaue we missed a lot of signals that we should have paid attention to leading up to 9/11 and it was thought in this legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security and created the DNI that this would be a better coordinating mechanism. I think there’s a lot of problems with it, but it is at the hub of all of our intelligence. The DNI has access to everything, everything that they want to see. I mean, I hope there are career and even political appointees in varies of the agencies that are slow-walking or refusing to share information with Pulte.

Clinton encouraged a lawsuit to be brought that would “test” the administration’s commitment to Pulte and whether his lack of experience disqualifies him, even in an acting role. Tehran, China, and Moscow, she said at one point, are “cheering” Pulte’s appointment and his lack of experience.

Clinton said:

But I would also call out too, I don’t know why there hasn’t been a lawsuit brought. He is manifestly unqualified under the statute to hold that position, I would argue even in an acting role. They’re not gonna nominated him thinking they can avoid the collision with the statutory requirements, but somebody ought to be bringing a lawsuit to test it, to try to enjoin him until the merits are decided as to whether an acting DNI doesn’t have to comply with the requirements, which strikes me as another tortured argument that is worth trying to test.

Watch above via Democracy Docket.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report.

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