Politics
Trump Named a Housing Official With No Experience to Run US Intelligence
By Mike Harper · June 3, 2026
When Congress created the Director of National Intelligence position in the wake of September 11, it wrote a specific requirement into the law: any nominee “shall have extensive national security expertise.”
Bill Pulte has none.
On Tuesday, Trump announced he was appointing Pulte — director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — as acting director of national intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation effective June 30. Pulte will simultaneously continue serving as FHFA director, meaning the man now overseeing the CIA, NSA, and the entire 18-agency US intelligence community will also be managing the government’s mortgage finance apparatus. His biography lists experience in housing and philanthropy. It lists nothing in intelligence.
Trump’s reasoning for the pick, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision, was not Pulte’s national security credentials. It was his willingness to move fast and hit hard.
“Trump wanted his next director of national intelligence to take on the so-called ‘deep state’ quickly — and Bill Pulte was known as a ‘move-fast-and-break-things kind of guy.’”
At the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte had used his access to mortgage records in ways that alarmed career officials. He filed a criminal referral against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, accusing her of mortgage fraud based on property records he accessed through his FHFA role. He filed a criminal referral against New York Attorney General Letitia James, also based on mortgage and property records. Cook sued to block her firing; that case is pending before the Supreme Court. James was subsequently charged with bank fraud.
The pattern Trump observed and liked: Pulte found novel uses for the access his housing role gave him to go after people the administration considered enemies. The director of national intelligence has access to considerably more than mortgage records.
CNN reported that Pulte had directly lobbied Trump for the DNI role after Gabbard announced her departure, telling the president he wanted more responsibility and a bigger platform. Three sources told CNN the rationale for selecting him was simple — Trump liked what he saw and believed Pulte could replicate it at a larger scale.
The appointment immediately complicated a bipartisan effort to extend FISA Section 702 — the surveillance authority that allows US intelligence agencies to monitor foreign communications — before its June 12 expiration. Democrats and several Republicans who had been working toward an extension expressed concern that placing a political operative with no intelligence background at the head of the DNI days before a major surveillance vote was not a signal of good faith about how that authority would be used.
“We don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there.”
Pulte, 38, is a wealthy businessman and grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, one of the largest homebuilders in the United States. He has given away large sums of money on social media, a practice that earned him significant online followings and apparently caught Trump’s attention. He has no known prior experience with classified information, intelligence analysis, counterterrorism, signals intelligence, foreign adversary assessment, or any of the other functions the office he now leads is responsible for.
He has, however, demonstrated a willingness to use whatever access he has against whoever the president needs him to target.
That, by all accounts, is why he has the job.