CNN’s Elie Honig Savages Trump DNI Nominee: Reputation As a ‘Chameleon,’ ‘Lacks the Backbone,’ ‘Not Deeply Respected’ 

CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig unloaded on Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who has been nominated to be the next Director of National Intelligence.

During his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Clayton was asked by multiple Democratic senators whether former President Joe Biden had defeated President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The nominee refused to say, instead opting to frame the matter as Biden having been “certified” as the winner.

“I’m not an election denier,” Clayton told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In another exchange, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) asked Clayton about the FBI’s execution of a search warrant on an election office in Atlanta in January. Specifically, Ossoff asked about the presence of then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the raid, despite having no authority over the probe. That investigation is seemingly connected to Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Clayton was caught off guard by the question and said he had not anticipated that he would be asked about the matter.

On Wednesday’s installment of The Source, host Kaitlan Collins noted that Ossoff’s line of questioning was an attempt to ascertain the lengths Clayton would go for Trump, even if given dubious orders.

“Tulsi Gabbard was criticized,” Collins noted. “People [were] saying, ‘That is not the job of the Director of National Intelligence, to be there in a law enforcement capacity.'”

Honig, who was an assistant U.S. attorney in the office Clayton currently leads, said the nominee has a less-than-sterling reputation:

Exactly. It goes to Jay Clayton’s conception of what that job as DNI entails. And to be on site of a search warrant, to have the DNI there, is completely out of place, is completely ridiculous. And I think that would’ve been the natural follow up had he acknowledged that he remembered anything.

And one other thing about Jay Clayton, I don’t know him. He took over the U.S. Attorney’s office at S.D.N.Y. a couple years after I left. But I know plenty of people there. And the reputation of Jay Clayton is that he’s a chameleon, that he goes by to get by. He goes along to get along, that he lacks the backbone to stand up for that office. He’s not as over-the-top offensive as some other folks we’ve seen in high positions at DOJ, but he’s not deeply respected in that office right now. And tears were not shed when he was nominated for this job, if he gets it someday.

During Trump’s first administration, Clayton served as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Watch above via CNN.

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