Bill Pulte picks equally inexperienced GOP election operative for powerful spy agency job
Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has installed as his chief of staff a woman who worked on election-related issues for the Republican National Committee, according to former U.S. officials.
Christina Norton, the former R.N.C. official, has also served as Bill Pulte’s chief of staff at the federal housing agency he leads. But much of her recent work for the G.O.P. has centered on election issues, including efforts to monitor voting sites during the 2024 presidential election.
Mr. Pulte’s decision to put Ms. Norton in the powerful post is likely to further fuel concerns among Democrats, intelligence officials and state and local election administrators that he intends to focus on hunting for evidence of election fraud at the behest of President Trump.
Mr. Trump has said Mr. Pulte is expected to work on election security matters, prompting fears by some officials that he could try to influence the midterm elections. Other officials expect him to declassify documents related to issues that have preoccupied Mr. Trump, including the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
While at the R.N.C., Ms. Norton oversaw a poll watcher program that included conservative conspiracy theorists, including Jack Posobiec, who helped spread the false “Pizzagate” stories about child abuse at a restaurant in Washington.
In a statement, Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the mission of Mr. Pulte’s office was to counter foreign threats and not to “import election denialism into the intelligence community.”
“If reports are true that Bill Pulte, whose installation as acting D.N.I. already raises serious legal questions, is bringing a former senior R.N.C. official who cavorted with election deniers and conspiracy theories into O.D.N.I. as his chief of staff, Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections,” Mr. Warner said in a statement. [Continue reading…]