President Donald Trump on Tuesday named Bill Pulte, who in his role running a federal housing agency pressed for investigations into the president’s political foes, to serve as acting director of national intelligence, giving him oversight of the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Pulte has no known background in intelligence, military or national security, but he is a Trump loyalist who has been among the most aggressive advocates for prosecuting Democrats and others perceived by Trump as having crossed him. He will replace Tulsi Gabbard, who announced last month that she was stepping down to care for her husband, who has cancer.

Pulte will continue to run the housing agency while taking on the position of director of national intelligence.

Pulte did not respond to a message seeking comment.

On paper, the director of national intelligence, a role created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, is among the most powerful of Cabinet positions, responsible for coordinating the work of the CIA and a host of other agencies. But Trump has never seen it as an important role, his advisers have said previously, and in his first term, he believed the staff working for that office were leaking information about him.

The fact that Pulte will serve in an acting role, as opposed to facing Republican senators during a confirmation hearing for the job, could give him a freer hand in focusing on priorities the president cares about, including looking for evidence that his election loss in 2020 stemmed from fraud, something that Gabbard was already pursuing.

In announcing the appointment on his social media platform, Trump said, “William 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.”

Pulte already has become a lightning rod within the administration. Throughout 2025, while he was leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he used social media to accuse some of Trump’s perceived enemies of committing mortgage fraud. His tactics infuriated and frustrated officials at the White House, as well as prosecutors and leadership at the Justice Department.

But his actions earned Trump’s deep appreciation and admiration, and the president was eager to take Pulte’s phone calls.

The move came as Trump was giving John Solomon, a journalist who the president favors and who has been deeply critical of some of the investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign conspired with Russians, a role as a special government employee leading a “transparency” task force.

It also came on the heels of Republican senators condemning Trump’s plan to create a $1.8 billion, taxpayer-funded “weaponization” fund to settle his own lawsuit against his government over his tax returns having been leaked during his first term. The administration signaled Monday that it was backing off that plan.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Maggie Haberman/Eric Lee
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