SDNY U.S. Attorney tapped for Intel chief—after election conspiracy 'audition'

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton sowed doubt about California's elections days before Trump nominated him for a big promotion.

SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton appears on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Days after an eyebrow-raising appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor Jay Clayton received a nomination for the position of Director of National Intelligence.

When first eyed for the role of U.S. Attorney, Clayton’s predecessor Geoffrey Berman called him “an unqualified choice” because of his lack of experience as a federal prosecutor. Clayton appears to have slender qualifications for the top national security position in the United States, save for his brief stint heading the Southern District of New York (SDNY). The statute for the role requires that nominees “shall have extensive national security expertise,” but Clayton’s background is largely in civil financial enforcement. He previously served as director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but he has a qualification that Donald Trump prizes highly.

Throughout his brief tenure as SDNY U.S. Attorney, Clayton routinely provided pro-Trump commentary on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he recently cast doubt on California’s elections. Some of SDNY’s most respected veterans who served in that office called it a stunning departure from the office’s norms of independence.

Former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, who spent 17 years inside that office before serving as an elected district attorney, told All Rise News that Clayton’s TV punditry seemed to be an “audition” for Trump.

Another former SDNY prosecutor with decades of experience said in an interview that he never saw Clayton’s predecessors engage in politically charged TV commentary. A close-knit law enforcement community, SDNY alumni are typically reluctant to criticize their successors.

The once-”Sovereign” district

The office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan once burnished the reputation of the “Sovereign District of New York,” a jurisdiction that boasted about its independence from Washington, D.C.

It’s where ex-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara refused to answer the phone when Donald Trump called his office during his first term in 2017 — and his successor Berman initially refused to step down from his position during a standoff years later with then-Attorney General Bill Barr, who reportedly pressured him to end a politically sensitive multi-billion dollar money laundering case implicating the Turkish government.

In 2020, Berman refused to leave his position until Barr abandoned his plan to replace him with Clayton, and Barr relented, nominating Berman’s then-deputy Audrey Strauss as his successor. Trump immediately reverted to his plan to install Clayton in SDNY during his second term.

Unlike his predecessors, Clayton has brought few major cases inside the federal courthouse in Wall Street’s shadow. Prior SDNY U.S. Attorneys prosecuted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, billionaire financiers and New York State’s top political leadership. (Ex-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, who prosecuted Epstein and Maxwell, was fired under Clayton’s watch, and two federal judges said that Clayton tried to unseal Epstein-related grand jury records as a “diversion” for public outrage about the scandal.) Clayton’s highest-profile case — against ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro — was first indicted by Berman.

But Clayton still managed to keep his name in the news despite a paucity of ambitious indictments through his CNBC appearances, where he’s denounced Trump’s criminal prosecutions and defended his $1.776 billion slush fund.

On Monday, Clayton told “Squawk Box” that the United States has “a deep problem with voting in America" during a roundtable about the recent California election.

“The American people are right to question it,” Clayton said, referring to election “integrity.”

Some SDNY stalwarts never saw anything like it before Clayton.

“Why go on these shows? What is he gaining from this? Who is he trying to please?” Rocah asked rhetorically during a video interview with All Rise News.

She added later: “His job is not to audition for Donald Trump.”

Former SDNY prosecutor Perry Carbone, who spent more than 30 years inside the Justice Department and worked with Clayton, said politically charged interviews are against the district’s traditions.

“When a U.S. Attorney does a public appearance, he should be appearing neutral and impartial, and not engaging in highly charged political discussions,” Carbone said.

Speaking as someone who “respects” Clayton, Carbone said that avoiding the partisan fray is important to protect the public perception of the office.

“The story here isn’t necessarily about one person,” Carbone said. “It should be the thousands of career employees, who work every day to uphold the rule of law, and they’re the ones who deserve public confidence that the institution remains independent and above politics.”

The SDNY U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment.

‘The dumbest conspiracy theory’

During Clayton’s roughly 9-minute segment, he touched the third rail of American politics: MAGA-borne election conspiracy theories, which he appeared to endorse.

Instead of echoing Trump’s 2020 election lies, Clayton validated right-wing distrust about the electoral defeat of longshot Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star turned Trump-endorsed conservative hopeful.

In a city where more than 60 percent of the voters are registered Democratic, and fewer than 15 percent are registered Republican, Trump-endorsed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt was projected to be the loser of the mayoral election that day, after nearly a week of grindingly slow ballot-counting. Although the final tally won’t be completed for weeks, Pratt appeared to have garnered an almost identical percentage of the votes that Trump did in the last cycle: 26 percent.

This reality has spawned, in the estimation of CNN’s data guru Harry Enten, the “dumbest conspiracy theory” he ever heard about elections.

Nithya Raman, the democratic-socialist candidate who defeated Pratt, outperformed him in the last Los Angeles Times poll before the race, and she is the favorite in the upcoming runoff elections against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Enten pointed out that Bass would have much preferred having Pratt as her opponent, as she polls 18 points ahead of him.

Clayton didn’t cite any evidence of election fraud or irregularities during the segment, nor did he contradict a debunked conspiracy theory by CNBC host Joe Kernan that late-counting ballot drops had shifted 100 percent toward Democrats.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, dispelled that rumor on social media the prior day, writing: "There was a claim circulating on social media about an election night ballot update at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters where one candidate received zero votes.”

“We reviewed official county records. The claim is false,” Essayli added. “Each candidate received votes in every update.”

A Trump appointee, Essayli was disqualified as U.S. Attorney because he was unable to secure Senate confirmation or the approval of the judges in his district, but he has continued to serve in the first assistant position.

Despite claiming that he was “not speculating about fraud,” Clayton baselessly suggested throughout the segment that California’s elections were untrustworthy and that there was an unacceptable “opportunity” to rig the race. He didn’t specify, or provide evidence for, that claim.

CNBC’s “Squawk Box” didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether the show would post a correction about the false and debunked claim.

‘They tried to destroy him’

That segment was far from Clayton’s maiden voyage in MAGA punditry.

Earlier this year, Clayton defended Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund as fair compensation for the leak of his tax returns by the supposedly shadowy forces against him.

“Look, they leaked his tax returns, they tried to destroy him,” Clayton said. “Okay, we resolved that."

There was never a “they.”

In 2019, an Internal Revenue Service contractor named Charles Littlejohn leaked Trump’s records along with those of hundreds of thousands of other people to expose the tax avoidance schemes of the wealthy. Though the leak occurred during Trump’s first term, Littlejohn was prosecuted during the Biden administration and received a heavy 5-year sentence. Clayton did not explain why he believed the disclosure of Trump’s tax records, something most other presidents have done voluntarily, would have supposedly destroyed Trump.

Mimi Rocah called it “humorous” how Clayton’s boss, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, retreated from defending the fund days later.

“So Clayton put himself out there in a very vulnerable way, defending something that no one else was going to really defend, including Republican senators,” she said.

But Clayton’s implicit backing of the Jan. 6 rioters was deadly serious.

“The whole idea of the settlement is purportedly to right a wrong to these poor January 6th defendants who were supposedly wrongly prosecuted — when they were not,” she said.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has scheduled Clayton’s confirmation hearing for June 17 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.

Unless confirmed in lightning speed, Clayton will take over for Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, who has no previous national security experience and routinely targeted Trump’s perceived enemies with unsupported mortgage fraud allegations as Federal Housing Finance Agency director. Pulte was expected to temporarily assume the job on June 19.

Look out for an extensive video interview with Mimi Rocah about Clayton and SDNY soon on Legal AF’s All Rise News playlist.