The woman who tried to sue Donald Trump into bankruptcy just gave a glowing endorsement to his nominee for Director of National Intelligence, and if that doesn't make your spider senses tingle, you might want to get those checked. New York Attorney General Letitia James went on MSNBC and called Jay Clayton "a professional who understands the law and has earned her respect."
If that doesn't smell like week-old fish at a summer barbecue, I don't know what does.
Let's back up. Jay Clayton served as SEC Chairman from 2017 to 2020 under Trump's first term and later as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Before that, he spent roughly two decades as a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the whitest-shoe law firms on Wall Street. On paper, the guy's got credentials. But credentials aren't the issue here.
The issue is who's vouching for him.
This is the same Letitia James who made prosecuting Trump her entire political identity. The same AG who faced investigations after it was revealed she had 20 years of false representations in mortgage and property records involving a 5-unit apartment building in Brooklyn — charges serious enough to warrant a referral to the Department of Justice and scrutiny in the Eastern District of Virginia. Glass houses, stones, the whole bit.
So why is she suddenly playing nice with a Trump pick? That's the $250 million question — roughly the amount she tried to extract from Trump in her civil fraud case.
The previous DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, actually shook things up. She revoked security clearances for 37 officials, picked fights with the CIA over declassification, and generally made the intelligence community sweat through their suits. She even helped expose information related to Anthony Fauci and the COVID origins cover-up. Gabbard was a disruptor. The swamp hated her.
Now here comes Clayton, and the swamp is... smiling? Letitia James is practically rolling out the red carpet. The intelligence community isn't leaking opposition research. Nobody's screaming about national security risks.
That silence is deafening.
Look, maybe Clayton will get in there and clean house. Maybe he'll be tougher than his Wall Street pedigree suggests. But when the woman who literally campaigned on a promise to "get Trump" is endorsing your intelligence chief, you don't just shrug and move on. You ask questions. Hard ones.
As filmmaker and author Joel Gilbert pointed out, the MAGA base has every reason to demand transparency about what Clayton plans to do differently — or whether the intelligence community just found someone they can work with instead of work around.
We didn't vote for Trump so Letitia James could handpick his cabinet by endorsement. We voted for disruption. We voted for accountability. We voted for people the establishment fears, not people the establishment applauds.
When your enemies start cheering, check your wallet. And check your DNI nominee's briefcase while you're at it.