During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had no recollection of the name Bill Pulte in connection with the U.S. intelligence community, despite his years of involvement in intelligence matters, lawmakers said.
Representative Bill Keating, a Democrat from Massachusetts, cited Rubio’s previous service on the Senate Intelligence Committee and his current roles as a senior U.S. diplomat and national security adviser to the president before questioning him.
Keating asked, "Have you ever specifically, in the context of the intelligence community, heard the name Bill Pulte?" Rubio responded by repeating the frame of the question: "In the context of intelligence?" and then said, "No." When Keating interrupted to ask, "Never heard his name?" Rubio’s reply was that he had not.
Keating pressed the point, saying, "Thank you for answering that. Never even heard his name, given all your years of experience and your position now. Never heard the name."
The exchange came after President Donald Trump on Tuesday appointed Bill Pulte, a federal housing regulator, as acting director of national intelligence. That move elevated a political ally with no national security experience to oversee the sprawling U.S. intelligence community at a time the article described as involving war and global tensions.
Democrats and at least one Republican criticized Pulte as lacking the qualifications necessary to manage the nation’s intelligence services. Keating added a lengthy characterization of Pulte’s background, saying: "For the record, Bill Pulte is a person Donald Trump has chosen for the acting director of national intelligence with no experience in the intelligence field, whose misuse, widely reported, of confidential information led to the prosecution of the president’s political enemies, is now the person in charge of the nation’s most closely guarded intelligence, when he couldn’t even conduct himself appropriately as the federal housing finance director."
At 38 years old, Pulte has used his role leading a low-profile mortgage regulatory agency to seek probes into individuals whom the president regards as adversaries, pursuing allegations of mortgage fraud against them. In announcing the appointment on Truth Social, Trump praised Pulte, calling him someone with "deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America."
The testimony and subsequent criticism underscore the controversy surrounding the pick and the questions lawmakers raised about placing someone without an intelligence background in charge of the intelligence community.
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