Trump taps housing regulator Bill Pulte as acting intelligence chief, replacing Tulsi Gabbard

President Trump on Tuesday named Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, a surprise move that installs a 38-year-old housing regulator and loyal ally atop the nation's spy agencies as Tulsi Gabbard prepares to step down at the end of the month.

Trump announced the pick on Truth Social, praising Pulte's management record at the FHFA and his oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte will hold both jobs simultaneously, FHFA director and acting DNI, and would need Senate confirmation to take the intelligence post permanently.

Gabbard's last day as DNI will be June 30. She announced her departure last month, citing her husband Abraham's recent bone cancer diagnosis. The appointment of Pulte signals that the White House wants a proven loyalist running the intelligence community during a period of active operations in the Middle East and ongoing declassification efforts at home.

Who is Bill Pulte?

Pulte is the grandson of home-building mogul William J. Pulte and the founder of Twitter Philanthropy. He runs Pulte Capital and has been a fixture at Mar-a-Lago. During the post-2024 transition, he lobbied for the Housing and Urban Development secretary post before landing at the FHFA.

In his current role, Pulte has not been shy about wielding government authority against figures the administration considers political adversaries. He issued criminal referrals against New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, former Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, all over allegations of mortgage fraud.

That combative streak has also created friction inside the cabinet. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly threatened to "punch you in your f-ing face" after learning Pulte had disparaged him to the president last September, an episode that made headlines and underscored the sharp elbows Pulte brings to internal White House politics.

Trump, in his announcement, framed the appointment around competence rather than combat. He wrote that Pulte has "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."

Democrats raise statutory objections

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wasted no time objecting. Warner said in a statement that Trump had "chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution."

"The concern is not only that Mr. Pulte lacks the 'extensive national security experience' required by statute for the job, which was created after intelligence failures led to the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11. It is that he appears to have been selected precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need."

Warner went further, warning that "intelligence becomes politicized" and "inconvenient facts disappear" when the DNI is chosen for loyalty over expertise. He claimed the appointment would leave "Americans more vulnerable to a terrorist attack."

Representatives for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Warner's objections follow a familiar pattern. Democrats questioned Gabbard's qualifications before her confirmation, too. They questioned John Ratcliffe's before that. The statutory argument about "extensive national security experience" is worth examining on its merits, but it carries less weight coming from a party that spent years insisting the intelligence community's assessments were beyond reproach, right up until those assessments became inconvenient.

Gabbard's record as DNI

Gabbard leaves behind a mixed but consequential tenure. She aligned closely with Trump's priorities, taking a leading role in investigating alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election and forwarding findings to the DOJ about what she called a "treasonous conspiracy" by the Obama administration to undermine Trump's 2016 victory.

She also convened the Director's Initiatives Group, or DIG, a task force dedicated to declassifying federal records on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, so-called "Havana Syndrome," and the origins of COVID-19. That last effort produced a significant result: CIA special operations officer James Erdman III testified to Congress earlier this month that a wide-ranging federal "cover-up" had downplayed findings that SARS-CoV-2 most likely resulted from a laboratory accident in China.

The administration's broader personnel moves have continued at a brisk pace. Trump recently previewed a renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, one of several announcements reflecting the president's appetite for visible, fast-moving action across government.

Gabbard publicly backed Trump's decision to launch Operation Epic Fury against Iran, despite her well-known history of opposing foreign intervention. She testified to the Senate in March that "the intelligence community assessed that Iran maintained the intention to rebuild and to continue to grow their nuclear enrichment capability." But CIA Director John Ratcliffe drew more frequent praise from the president for his role in both the Iran operation and the January 3 apprehension and extradition of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone called Gabbard "the most dedicated opponent of the deep state within the Trump administration" before her departure.

A pattern of bold personnel moves

Pulte's appointment fits a broader second-term pattern: Trump placing combative loyalists in positions where they can challenge entrenched bureaucracies. The FHFA director's criminal referrals against political figures like Schiff and James were not the actions of a cautious caretaker. Whether that approach translates to the intelligence world, where bad information can cost lives, is the real question.

The administration has not been afraid of turbulence in its personnel choices. The removal of Kristi Noem as DHS secretary earlier this year triggered open celebration among DHS officials, with one person familiar with the reaction saying "people in the office are actually crying out of happiness." A senior DHS official wrote that "her actions have led to the reputational loss of the DHS." Trump replaced Noem with Sen. Markwayne Mullin.

The Noem episode showed the White House is willing to cut loose appointees who create more problems than they solve. Pulte's appointment suggests the opposite bet, that his aggressive posture is a feature, not a bug.

The president has also faced legal and policy battles across multiple fronts, including an appeal of a ruling that blocked Kennedy's vaccine policy overhaul, another instance where the administration chose confrontation over accommodation with the administrative state.

What comes next

Pulte takes over as acting DNI on July 1. He inherits Gabbard's declassification task force, the ongoing intelligence support for Middle East operations, and a workforce that has been the subject of intense political scrutiny from both parties for a decade.

If Trump wants Pulte in the job permanently, the Senate confirmation process will be the real test. Cotton and Crawford's silence on Tuesday was notable. Warner's objections were loud but predictable. The question is whether any Republican senators share concerns about Pulte's lack of traditional intelligence credentials, or whether the GOP caucus views the DNI role the way the White House appears to: as a management and oversight job that benefits from a fighter, not a career spook.

Pulte will also keep running the FHFA and chairing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That dual-hat arrangement is unusual and may draw its own scrutiny. Managing two massive government portfolios simultaneously is no small ask, even for someone the president credits with overseeing a "substantial increase" in the agencies' financial position.

Trump's broader string of public announcements and personnel decisions this spring has kept Washington off balance. The Pulte appointment is the latest move designed to keep the initiative firmly in the Oval Office's hands.

The real stakes

Democrats will frame this as politicization. They always do. But the intelligence community's credibility problems did not start with Bill Pulte or Tulsi Gabbard. They started with 51 former intelligence officials signing a letter calling the Hunter Biden laptop story Russian disinformation weeks before an election. They started with years of leaked assessments timed for maximum political damage. They started with a FISA process that a federal court found was abused to surveil a presidential campaign.

The question is not whether the intelligence community needs reform. It does. The question is whether a 38-year-old housing regulator whose main qualification is loyalty and tenacity is the right person to do it, or whether the job demands someone who already knows where the bodies are buried, figuratively speaking, inside Langley and Fort Meade.

Trump has made his choice. The Senate will eventually have its say. In the meantime, the intelligence community gets another reminder that this president values loyalty and results over résumés, and that no agency is too important to be run by someone the establishment did not pick.