When President Trump named Bill Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence last week, it threw a grenade into the middle of delicate congressional negotiations around one of the nation's key spy powers.
Pulte, the 38 year-old director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is best known for his role as a partisan attack dog for the president. He was a prominent advocate for Trump's push to fire then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and used his sizable social media following to push for mortgage fraud investigations into Trump's perceived enemies.
As director of national intelligence, Pulte would oversee the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus. That includes the collection of hundreds of thousands of foreigners' electronic communications under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, one of the nation's most important surveillance tools.
On Capitol Hill, where months-long negotiations over the renewal of the FISA 702 program appeared close to an end, Pulte's appointment came as a surprise to the lawmakers involved in the deliberations.
The Senate was moving toward a robust three-year extension ahead of the law's Friday expiration after two prior short-term extensions. Then Trump's Truth Social post dramatically changed the context of the talks.
"I am appointing the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Chairman of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, William J. Pulte, to serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence," Trump wrote. "William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America."
The announcement was met with confusion and dismay on Capitol Hill. Many Democrats, concerned that Pulte has no national security sector experience and a history of weaponizing his role, made clear they would not support extending FISA section 702 with him in the role.
"Inventor of Twitter Philanthropy"
The scion of a homebuilding fortune built by his grandfather, he attended Northwestern University and graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism. He started a private equity firm that invests in home services-related business and ran a non-profit which worked with Detroit and surrounding cities to clear blighted lots.
During Trump's first term, Pulte turned his philanthropic attention online and quickly rose to prominence by giving away money to people on Twitter. He often offered bounties for retweets by prominent accounts.
"If @realDonaldTrump retweets this, I will give $30,000 to a Veteran on Twitter," reads a characteristic 2019 post. It was shared by the president with the caption "THANK YOU BILL!"
Pulte, who often claimed to be the "Inventor of Twitter Philanthropy" in local media interviews, regularly sent funds to folks looking to pay down debt, seek medical care or simply buy dinner. He told the Detroit Free Press in August 2019 that he employed a team of more than 10 people to "field and vet" thousands of requests.
His following on the platform ballooned to nearly 3 million people. In December 2021, as his Twitter philanthropy push continued, the future Trump confidante was still reluctant to talk about politics.
"I tell people, don't bait me into politics," he told the Detroit Free Press. "I stay apolitical."
Behind the scenes though, Pulte and his wife Diana were quickly becoming Republican mega-donors. Less than two months prior, the Pultes made a $500,000 contribution to the Trump-aligned "Make America Great Again, Again!" super PAC.
By the end of the 2024 election cycle, the family had given roughly a million dollars to Republican candidates and party-aligned groups.
Housing chief to intel chief
After Pulte helped boost Trump's presidential return, the president-elect named Pulte to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
The agency was created after the 2008 recession to bolster the health of U.S housing finance markets, ensuring the safety and accessibility of mortgage loans. In his perch as the agency's director, he's gained a reputation for making abrupt policy announcements on X and has drawn scrutiny from industry leaders and investors over his muddled promises about the future of the federally controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
More than policy, Pulte's tenure has been marked by how he has leveraged the role to go after people the president dislikes. Pulte leveraged his broad social media following to broadcast accusations that several of the president's perceived enemies had committed mortgage fraud, including Fed official Lisa Cook, New York's Democratic Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Each has denied wrongdoing.
Pulte did not respond to multiple interview requests placed through the administration and FHFA staff.
FISA hand grenade
By statute, the director of national intelligence is meant to ensure impartial intelligence assessments are presented to the president, to avoid the failures that occurred ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks and Iraq war — a job description that Pulte's critics say is temperamentally at odds with his reputation as a partisan attack dog.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, had been working alongside the committee's chairman, Sen. Tom Cotton, to adapt an extension of FISA 702 passed by the House last month into something that could secure the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate when Trump made his appointment announcement.
In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition the following day, Warner expressed that putting a man who weaponized confidential mortgage information in charge of all U.S. intelligence agencies made it impossible to convince Democrats and some Republicans to back the tool, given the existing concerns among a bipartisan group of lawmakers that the tool enables warrantless domestic surveillance.
"He's extraordinarily unqualified, but the timing could also not be more of a mistake," Warner said. Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, described Pulte as a "political hack" and "malignant clown" in a press conference this week.
Even Republican leaders expressed worries. "We don't need a weaponized DNI," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters last week. "We need professionals there."
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said "I have no observations on the matter" when asked whether Pulte had the right experience to lead the intelligence agencies.
Democratic congressional staff familiar with the negotiations told NPR that unless the president reversed course on Pulte's nomination ahead of Friday's nominal deadline — intelligence collection could continue under grandfathered authority for many months — there would likely not be enough Democrat support to renew FISA authority.
Trump has said he is interviewing candidates to take the job on a permanent basis, but does not seem inclined to reverse course on Pulte before Friday's FISA deadline. He is instead encouraging Congress to pass another short-term extension.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump said that as an acting director, not beholden to Senate confirmation, Pulte can quickly shake up the agency and continue to reduce its headcount.
"You're less shackled," he said. "It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time."
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