June 2 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump appointed federal housing regulator Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence on Tuesday, elevating a political loyalist with no national security experience to lead the sprawling U.S. intelligence community at a time of war and global tensions.
In a social media post, Trump said Pulte, 38, will temporarily replace the departing Tulsi Gabbard in the intelligence post but will also continue serving as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chair of federally supported mortgage-backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"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," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Gabbard, a Trump appointee who has served as director of national intelligence since February 2025, last month announced plans to leave the post effective on June 30. Reuters reported she was forced from the role over frictions with the White House. Gabbard said she resigned due to her husband's recent cancer diagnosis.
NO EXPERIENCE IN INTELLIGENCE
Pulte, who has no experience in intelligence, temporarily will oversee the 18 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community, with a combined budget of more than $115 billion for fiscal year 2026.
They include the premier foreign spy service, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, the massive agency that eavesdrops on foreign communications and helps defend the U.S. against cyberattacks.
Trump announced Pulte's appointment as the top American spy as the United States is embroiled in the Iran war and a raft of other foreign policy crises for which intelligence is crucial, from Russia's war on Ukraine to China's challenge to U.S. military and economic dominance.
Through much of Trump's second term as president, Pulte has used his housing agency post to encourage prosecutions of the Republican president's perceived political enemies, accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Senator Adam Schiff, both Democrats, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud.
A federal grand jury refused to indict James in a Justice Department prosecution. Officials have not brought charges against Schiff, who denies the allegations.
Trump attempted to fire Cook - an unprecedented move by a president against a U.S. central bank official - over Pulte's unsubstantiated accusations, but courts allowed her to remain in the role. She, too, denied the allegations. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in January, and appeared poised to rule in Cook's favor. The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks in the Cook case.
'PARTISAN THUG'
Congressional Democrats denounced Pulte's appointment.
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer called Pulte a "partisan thug."
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Pulte's elevation "makes clear that this president is not looking for an intelligence leader who will follow the facts or speak truth to power, but rather someone who will be willing to shape intelligence around the president's wishes, regardless of the cost to the American people."
Pulte is heir to his family's residential development firm, PulteGroup, which was founded by his grandfather in the 1950s. Pulte ascended to the company's board in 2016 amid a leadership dispute. He previously founded a private equity firm, Pulte Capital, and is involved in large-scale philanthropic activity.
Gabbard was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives who split with the party after a failed presidential bid. She adopted conservative viewpoints and endorsed Trump in the 2024 election.
She took a leading role in investigating Trump's baseless claims of irregularities in his 2020 electoral loss to Democrat Joe Biden, including attending an FBI search of a Georgia election facility in January. The search, records later showed, was based on questionable data supplied by a White House political appointee known for false election denialism.
Signs of tension between the White House and Gabbard appeared when Trump suggested last year she was wrong in assessing there was no evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon.
She was largely absent from deliberations between Trump and his top national security advisers on major foreign policy issues, including the U.S. military operation that deposed former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, the Iran war that was launched in February and Cuba.
Another source of friction, Reuters has reported, was Gabbard's revocation in August 2025 of the security clearances of 37 current and former U.S. officials. The list she published revealed the name of a CIA officer serving undercover overseas.
Gabbard led several initiatives she cast as rooting out politicization from the intelligence community and approved the stripping of security clearances from former intelligence officials.
Reporting by Jacob Bogage, Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay, Steve Holland and David Ljunggren; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Will Dunham
