# Jay Clayton U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2025 to 2026 — the nation's most prominent federal prosecutor's office — and, since August 2026, **Director of National Intelligence**. A corporate lawyer who chaired the SEC in the first Trump administration, his installation atop the traditionally independent 'Sovereign District' was watched as a test of the office's autonomy under the second term. [[Donald Trump]] nominated Clayton to lead the intelligence community in July 2026; the Senate confirmed him **51–47 on July 28, 2026**, on a party-line vote — Democrats objecting that he declined to say Biden won in 2020 — and he was **sworn in August 3, 2026**, transplanting him from the prosecutorial to the intelligence side of the national-security state. He succeeded Acting DNI [[Bill Pulte]]; see [[ODNI]] for the full succession and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act dispute over Pulte's final six days. ## The NYT Grand-Jury Subpoenas (July 2026) On **July 10, 2026**, Clayton's SDNY office issued **federal grand-jury subpoenas** to four [[New York Times]] reporters — demanding testimony about their sources for reporting on Secret Service security concerns with the Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. The subpoenas came the same day [[Kash Patel]]'s [[FBI]] ran an eight-hour leak hunt out of the White House (not FBI headquarters) targeting the source of the story. Clayton thus became the prosecutor putting the legal machinery behind a press-freedom escalation that [[The Bulwark]]'s [[Bill Kristol]] called "ominous" — the first time in years that a U.S. Attorney had used the grand-jury power against working reporters at a major newspaper. The episode connects Clayton to the broader pattern of [[Media Capture]] and the [[First Amendment]] confrontations of the second term. See [[NYT Air Force One Subpoenas]] for the full event record. ## See Also - [[Donald Trump]] - [[Kash Patel]] - [[New York Times]] - [[Second Trump Administration]]