Trump official quietly begging employees back after brutal firings: sources

Jay Clayton, U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 15, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

NBC News reports that National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton is slandestinely maneuvering to hire back employees fired after drastic cuts in the department’s workforce were enacted under his fired predecessor Bill Pulte, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

“Clayton is asking some employees who had been let go to return to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, these people said. They said the effort is so far focused on employees who had been detailed to the ODNI but were sent back to one of the 18 spy agencies the office oversees as part of the staff cuts,” reports NBC.

Pulte had a reputation of “move fast and breaks things," as one CNN reporter said earlier this year. And he moved quick to clean house for President Donald Trump.

Trump told reporters in June that he believed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is “unnecessary and or too big.”

“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, about those who worked in the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations.

When the Wall Street Journal asked Trump whether he wanted Pulte to start firing people, and Trump said he wants him to “start the process.”

But the department appears to be more essential than Trump and Pulte initially treated it. The office of the DNI oversees 18 intelligence agencies from the CIA to the NSA and others. It was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the investigative commission found various intelligence departments weren't able to connect the dots between details each agency discovered.

The ODNI relies on a legion of employees who are detailed to the office from other intelligence agencies. But hundreds of employees were fired, offered early retirement or ordered to return to their home agencies as part of that major workforce downsizing by former directors Tulsi Gabbard and Pulte.

“The effort by Clayton to approach some former staff members about coming back suggests the new director is seeking to introduce a degree of stability to the ODNI after months of turmoil, including major personnel cutbacks, the firing of senior intelligence analysts and turf wars with the CIA and the FBI, according to current and former intelligence officials,” report NBC News. “During Gabbard’s tenure, the ODNI was often marginalized in administration discussions. She announced her resignation in May.”

NBC News added that the ODNI, which had a workforce of slightly more than 2,000 at the start of the Trump administration, “is now down to fewer than 1,000 employees, the people with knowledge of the matter. The sources did not know how many former employees have been approached by the ODNI to ask them to return to the agency.

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