When Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had to step down to take care of her seriously ill husband, a lot of people were on pins and needles playing the 'who next' game.
It really was a bit of a shock when President Trump stuck on Bill Pulte, who was already director of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac parent, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Besides a few WHO?'s from the crowd, there was a chorus of, 'but that guy doesn't know the first thing about the intelligence community!' which was precisely the idea.
'You're less shackled,' Trump told his appointee.
President Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his incoming acting director of national intelligence, to begin firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump said he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, was “unnecessary and/or too big.”
“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, pointing to holdovers from the Biden and Obama administrations. Asked whether he is calling on Pulte to fire people, Trump said he wants him to “start the process,” adding that his eventual nominee to serve in the role permanently should continue that work.
Trump stunned many of his own advisers when he said earlier this week that he was appointing Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as his intelligence chief. The move was met with skepticism from some Republicans on Capitol Hill, who raised concerns about Pulte’s lack of national-security experience.
Much as he has done over the course of the year at FHFA - between increasing the value of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac portfolio and his always wondrous tour of the empty buildings he discovered that his department was paying rent on...
...Pulte arrived in Spookville ready to sweep out the old.
There were the nervous Nellie warnings from the usual quavering voices threatening doom if he touched the draperies.
Bill Pulte is a danger to our national security.
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) June 22, 2026
I’ve already started pressing him hard to ensure he doesn’t abuse this role for political purposes… and I will keep working to hold him to account every single day he remains in this “acting” role.
Pulte did Warner one better and showed up a day early with his big dustpan in hand to get going.
NEW: From a source familiar with the matter-Personnel cuts @ODNIgov by Acting @DNIPulte began today.
— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbWSJ) June 22, 2026
Goal is to cut what Pulte and his team view is the excess “fat” at the agency, per this source.
The counterterrorism unit at the agency has yet to be touched, per this person.
The hyperventilating was off the charts.
THIS GUY ISN'T EVEN SENATE CONFIRMED!!!
Pulte just kept humming and carving away.
Yesterday, the 'unshackled' Pulte announced he was already on his fourth round of lay-offs at the sclerotic and deep-state-infested agency.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte says his office completed another round of layoffs.
The layoffs mark the fourth round of them since Pulte took office on June 19, The Hill reported.
"Since becoming Acting Director of National Intelligence, our team has been smartly, and carefully, reducing the size of ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence], re-focusing ODNI on national security, the law, and the statute. As of this evening, we just finished a 4th round of thoughtful, measured layoffs," Pulte said on X.
If the Trump administration were the Avengers, Bill Pulte would be Deadpool. pic.twitter.com/tL5mMltAmo
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) July 27, 2026
As he is shortly due to lose his temporary gig when (and if, of course) nominee Jay Clayton is confirmed, Pulte wanted to leave a leaner, more efficient and effective agency for the incoming Director. So he has spent the rest of what should be his last day or so tidying up with a fifth and final round of layoffs and posting a bonus document dump of declassifications.
Politico has a massive WAAH! on.
Just hours before his successor is expected to be confirmed by the Senate, acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte on Tuesday announced what appear to be sweeping staff reductions at the embattled intelligence coordination hub.
“Good News! In addition to the Historic DECLASSIFICATIONS (Transparency!) by the President, we are, this morning, Executing a 5th and Near Final Round of TERMINATIONS, an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago,” Pulte posted on his social media account Tuesday morning. “The Intelligence Community must protect the American people, NOT the political whims of the bloated and corrupt elite class.”
Pulte’s announcement of a 30 percent cut, depending on the baseline for when the dismissals started, could amount to the elimination of more than 300 staff at the ODNI, which is charged with coordinating intelligence collected by the other 17 members of the U.S. spy community and overseeing their budgets. It comes the same day the Senate is expected to vote on his full-time replacement, current top Manhattan federal prosecutor Jay Clayton, as the next head of the ODNI.
But Pulte's approach in the cuts at DNI was no different from his methodical surgery at FHFA. Trim the fat, lean the machine in an agency successive administrations had all agreed had become bloated and too sprawling to operate effectively.
...The cuts target redundant and non-critical positions, return some career officers to their home agencies, and follow earlier downsizing under the previous director.
Pulte has described the process as thoughtful and measured, aimed at making the roughly 1,800-person office operate more efficiently.
Why the reductions are necessary:
The ODNI was created after 9/11 to coordinate the intelligence community.
Over time it expanded into a large bureaucracy with overlapping functions.
Successive administrations have acknowledged the need for right-sizing.
Trump has publicly called the office “way too high for way too long” and directed Pulte to execute immediate, needed downsizing so resources focus on core national-security work rather than administrative layers.
Eliminating positions that are not essential:
Reduces waste and duplication across the 18 agencies and elements the ODNI oversees.
Allows talent and funding to concentrate on real threats instead of internal process.
Follows the same principle Pulte applied earlier as FHFA Director when he cut non-core roles (including in DEI and certain support functions) at Fannie Mae.
A smaller, sharper ODNI is more accountable to the American people and better positioned to deliver timely intelligence.
Bureaucracy does not equal security; results do.
Pulte’s approach, reviewing the full staff list early, conducting successive measured rounds, and publicly stating the goal of efficiency is exactly the kind of discipline the intelligence community needs.
No one better than an unshackled, non-intelligence community person with zero loyalty to 'the firm' to take it apart dispassionately.
As to the declassifications Pulte has been uploading this morning, quite a few of them have apparently been released before, but none have all been in the same place at the same time. That in itself is a service.
The ones that are new do have some eyebrows lifting.
Within the past hour, Acting Director of National Intelligence William Pulte posted a series of declassified intelligence documents on X. The screenshots I am sharing are not in chronological order because I am uploading them as they were posted.
— Bruce Snyder (@realBruceSnyder) July 27, 2026
In plain English, the documents… https://t.co/4xaDDdX83E
...In plain English, the documents show that U.S. intelligence knew China wanted President Trump defeated in 2020 and was targeting campaigns, voter data, polling companies and political organizations.
They also include internal discussions showing that some China-related election intelligence was rewritten, delayed, downgraded or separated from direct election reporting. One analyst said a President’s Daily Brief item had been “massaged” to remove direct links to the election.
Other documents focus on Venezuela, Smartmatic and reported methods for manipulating electronic voting systems.
President Trump declassified these records shortly after addressing the nation. Now the man overseeing America’s intelligence agencies is putting them back in front of the public all at once.
That timing is impossible to ignore.
And he is still posting. Just minutes ago, Pulte released additional declassified intelligence showing that China preferred President Trump to lose the 2020 election and that Russia, China and Iran were all engaged in efforts to influence America’s political landscape.
Pulte issued a handsome thank-you to the boss on his way out after a busy truncated tenure.
Thank you, for what you’ve done for public access to classified historical records.
— Ezra A. Cohen (@EzraACohen) July 27, 2026
Now it's time for Pulte to head back to the mortgage giants until he has to...well...metaphorically...
...pull the red tights out again.
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