Bill Pulte, Tapped as Acting DNI, Has Track Record of Weaponizing Federal Power for Partisan Retribution

On its face, the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting DNI is a personnel change. But it is a personnel change that is only intelligible as part of a deliberate, ongoing assault on two bedrock constitutional principles: that federal power must be exercised impartially, and that the career civil service must be protected from political coercion. The Pendleton Act of 1883 established that federal employment should be based on merit, not loyalty. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the DNI position to coordinate the intelligence community in the national interest, not in the president's political interest. Pulte's appointment — with no known national security experience — subordinates both of those traditions to raw partisan loyalty.

As director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte demonstrated exactly how he would weaponize a powerful position. In October 2025, Reuters exclusively reported that Pulte bypassed inspector general ethics rules to make criminal referrals against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, and other perceived Trump adversaries. Democratic senators subsequently requested a Government Accountability Office probe into whether Pulte misused his authority, and the GAO opened an investigation in December 2025. These were not routine anti-fraud actions; they were referrals against political figures, sent to a Justice Department that has shown a willingness to pursue the president's enemies. There is no credible evidence in any of the reporting that these referrals "froze assets" — that unsupported detail appeared in an earlier draft and should be removed. The threat is clear enough without exaggeration: a pattern of using criminal process as a political weapon.

Now Pulte would oversee the nation's spy agencies. The same man who bypassed ethics rules to send political opponents to the Justice Department would have access to the most sensitive intelligence, surveillance, and analytic capabilities in the world. Combined with the systematic removal of career intelligence professionals documented by other watchdogs, this represents an unprecedented centralization of power in a single political office. Congress should immediately investigate Pulte's FHFA criminal referrals, hold oversight hearings on the circumstances of his DNI appointment, and codify statutory protections against politicized intelligence activities — including in the Intelligence Authorization Act — to ensure that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence never becomes a white house political arm.