"Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president's delusions?" That was Sen. Jon Ossoff on Wednesday, to the man Trump wants running America's spy agencies, after Jay Clayton refused to say who won the 2020 election.
Not a trick question. Not classified. Just: who won.
"I'm not going to do this with you," Clayton said. Ossoff reminded him this was a job interview, and that he'd already agreed under oath to be honest with the committee. Clayton called it theater and said he wouldn't "engage in the theater." Then he just sat there.
"We know, you know, everyone in this room knows the truthful answer to that question."
He couldn't say it. Because saying it costs him the job.
Here's what he'd get instead. Clayton's confirmation is the key to reauthorizing Section 702, the foreign surveillance power that expired more than a month ago. He's currently the US Attorney in Manhattan, whose office just signed off on subpoenas targeting New York Times reporters. Before that, Trump's SEC chair. The résumé of a man who knows exactly which sentences end a career.
What he offered as a compromise tells you everything. Biden "was certified." Biden "went through our processes." Sen. Angus King, no bomb-thrower, cut through it: saying Biden was certified is not an answer. "You told us you'd tell truth to power, and you won't answer a very simple question."
Think about what "certified" is doing there. It turns 81 million ballots into a paperwork outcome. A clerical event. Something that merely got processed, rather than something you and your neighbors decided.
And it isn't abstract. Ossoff also pressed Clayton on outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard showing up at FBI raids on election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, this year. Gabbard testified her presence there was "requested by the president." The nation's top intelligence official, standing in a room full of Georgia ballots, on Trump's request.
Clayton said he wasn't aware of that until Ossoff told him.
When Ossoff kept pushing, Chairman Tom Cotton gaveled him down and shouted that his time was up.
Trump is giving a primetime speech Thursday night about elections and newly declassified intelligence. The material reportedly came out of the DNI's own office. That's the agency Clayton is auditioning to run. The audition was the answer he wouldn't give.
Republicans hold 53 seats. He doesn't need a single Democrat.
So he'll probably get it. A man who won't tell you who won an election, handed the keys to the surveillance state, because the one true sentence in the room was the one thing he wasn't allowed to say.
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