President Donald Trump has tapped Bill Pulte, a major campaign donor and housing industry executive, to serve as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte replaces former Congressmember Tulsi Gabbard and will oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies while apparently continuing to chair both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and direct the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Pulte has no known background in intelligence work, law enforcement, or national security. He has never served in Congress. Matt Platkin, former attorney general for New Jersey, called the appointment “yet another deeply alarming appointment,” adding that Pulte is “not somebody who has any of the requisite experience for this incredibly important office.”
What Pulte does have is a record of using his housing agency positions to make criminal referrals against Trump critics, including California Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Federal Reserve officials Jerome Powell and Lisa Cook, over claims of mortgage fraud.
A real estate executive walks into the intelligence community
The director of national intelligence is the president’s top intelligence advisor and coordinates the work of agencies including the CIA, NSA, and FBI. The position was created after 9/11 to prevent intelligence failures. It requires Senate confirmation for a permanent appointment.
Pulte’s professional background is in real estate development. His family company, Pulte Homes, has built extensively in New Jersey, including near Trump’s Bedminster golf course. He became a significant Trump campaign donor and was subsequently appointed to lead federal housing agencies, where he directed staff to pursue criminal referrals targeting individuals who had investigated, prosecuted, or criticized the president.
Platkin described Pulte as someone “who has used his position to weaponize his position against public servants, including my very good friend, Attorney General Tish James, who they tried, baselessly, to prosecute because she did her job in New York.”
Four jobs, zero intelligence credentials
Pulte is expected to hold all four positions simultaneously. The director of national intelligence oversees roughly 100,000 personnel across the intelligence community. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee roughly half of all U.S. home mortgages, a combined portfolio worth trillions of dollars. The Federal Housing Finance Agency regulates both entities and the Federal Home Loan Bank System.
At some point, the phrase “acting director of national intelligence with no intelligence experience who will also continue running the nation’s mortgage system while pursuing political prosecutions” stops fitting on business cards, which may explain why the White House didn’t print any.
None of these roles is historically considered part-time work. The intelligence community has spent two decades building protocols to prevent politicization after the failures that led to the Iraq War. Those protocols assume the director operates in good faith. They do not account for a director whose prior government service consisted primarily of initiating criminal referrals against his boss’s critics.
What comes next
Platkin noted that the appointment has already drawn bipartisan backlash and predicted Pulte “is somebody who’s going to face some real challenge through the confirmation proceedings.” Whether those proceedings will address the mortgage fraud referrals, the question of simultaneously holding multiple Senate-confirmed positions, or the absence of intelligence credentials remains to be seen.
The criminal referrals Pulte initiated while at the housing agency targeted public officials who had legal or investigative roles related to Trump. New York Attorney General Letitia James brought a civil fraud case against the Trump Organization. Senator Adam Schiff led the first impeachment inquiry. Jerome Powell, as Federal Reserve chair, has made interest rate decisions Trump publicly opposed. None of the referrals appears to have resulted in charges, but the pattern of targets is difficult to describe as coincidental.
What happens when the person coordinating domestic and foreign intelligence collection also controls access to housing credit and has demonstrated willingness to deploy federal agencies against political opponents is not a question with historical precedent. There is no established answer and no clear guardrail.
The question worth sitting with
If the Senate confirms someone with no intelligence background to lead the intelligence community while he simultaneously runs the mortgage system and continues targeting Trump’s enemies with federal enforcement tools, what part of the confirmation process is designed to stop exactly that?
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