Everybody Hates Bill Pulte
These escapades may have given Pulte “deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America,” but nobody would accuse Pulte, even on his own corrupt terms, of managing them particularly well. Further investigation established that criminal charges against Cook, Schiff, and James would never stick. Meanwhile, it came out that four members of Trump’s own second-term Cabinet—former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin; and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—similarly claimed two primary residences on their mortgage applications, along with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles and—rimshot, please—Pulte’s own father and stepmother. Needless to say, Pulte did not refer these cases to the Justice department. (For details, see my “Trump’s Argument for Firing Lisa Cook Lies in Tatters,” September 2025.)
A more accurate criticism of Bill Pulte, then, is not that he lacks experience in the intelligence field, but that he’s really bad at it. Also, Pulte doesn’t know when to quit. Even after all the facts I just recited came to light, Pulte made a similar referral concerning Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, a fierce Trump critic. Around the same time Pulte fired about a dozen ethics officials at FHFA, including the agency’s inspector general, who investigated internal agency complaints that Pulte obtained mortgage records improperly to punish political enemies. What Pulte lacks in finesse, he makes up in impunity.
It could be argued that it doesn’t matter who ends up being the director of national intelligence, or DNI, because it’s a bullshit job. (That’s why it was given to the maladroit Gabbard in the first place.) The position was created after 9/11 to address a breakdown in communication among the various intelligence agencies prior to that catastrophe. But it’s never been clear what the director of national intelligence does all day except prepare the Presidential Daily Brief, which Trump doesn’t read. Indeed, Politico reported last month that during his first 16 months in office Trump couldn’t sit still for more than a dozen verbal intelligence briefings. He’d rather watch Fox News. If Trump did read his Presidential Daily Brief he might learn that—according to a Tuesday Reuters report—the CIA has “stopped contributing to some intelligence assessments” produced by DNI, “including those related to the Iran war, as disputes over intelligence-sharing and areas of responsibility boil over.”
