Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, announced the appointment on Wednesday of a new deputy, James M. McDonald, who would oversee the prosecutor\u2019s office while Mr. Clayton prepares for his confirmation process to be President Trump\u2019s director of national intelligence.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump had already said he would nominate<\/a> Mr. McDonald to succeed Mr. Clayton as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the nation\u2019s most powerful law-enforcement positions.<\/p>\n But that move was delayed on June 17 after Mr. Trump said he would pull back Mr. Clayton\u2019s nomination for the national intelligence job, hours before he was scheduled to have a confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The president was seeking to pressure the Senate to pass a strict voter identification law that lacked sufficient support to advance.<\/p>\n After Mr. Clayton\u2019s nomination was paused, Mr. Trump installed Bill Pulte as the acting director for national intelligence. Critics on both sides of the aisle have said Mr. Pulte, the director of a federal housing agency, is a political loyalist with no relevant experience for the intelligence post.<\/p>\n Mr. Clayton\u2019s confirmation hearing has now been scheduled for July 15, and Mr. Clayton titled his news release about Mr. McDonald\u2019s appointment \u201cS.D.N.Y. plans leadership transition.\u201d<\/p>\n Congressional officials have said they hope to have Mr. Clayton installed in the intelligence post before the Senate takes a recess in August. During Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, Mr. Clayton was the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. McDonald, who goes by Jamie, has been a litigation partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. He has also been a member of the law firm\u2019s team that is handling Mr. Trump\u2019s appeal<\/a> of his criminal conviction in a Manhattan state court on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with concealing a hush-money payment to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n During Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, Mr. McDonald served as Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Before that, he spent several years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District.<\/p>\n There, he was a member of the team that prosecuted Sheldon Silver<\/a>, the once powerful Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly who was convicted in a 2015 trial on corruption charges. Mr. Silver\u2019s conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was retried, again convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. He died<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n Mr. McDonald graduated from Harvard College and the University of Virginia School of Law. He also served as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.<\/p>\n Julian Barnes contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, announced the appointment on Wednesday of a new deputy, James M.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[11288,33567,1452,103195,75,84,83,12392,9,24,49,63,94146,81494,1069,31464,1876,102173],"class_list":["post-293457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-appointments-and-executive-changes","tag-clayton","tag-donald-j","tag-james-michael-1982","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-mcdonald","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-state","tag-nyc","tag-office-of-the-director-of-national-intelligence","tag-sullivan-cromwell","tag-trump","tag-united-states-attorneys","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-walter-j"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}