Several staff members have reportedly been fired from the US office of the director of national intelligence (DNI), multiple outlets have reported. These firings come less than a week after Donald Trump appointed Bill Pulte as the acting director after former director Tulsi Gabbard announced she was leaving the post in late May.
According to CNN, which was first to report the firings on Monday, political appointees with ties to Gabbard were among those purged. ABC News reported that cuts to the National Terrorism Center were expected to be particularly large.
CBS reported on Tuesday that more than 50 career and political staff members had been dismissed, with six individuals fired and 45 “sent back to their home agencies”.
The DNI has not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment on the reported firings.
CNN first reported that Pulte, who also leads the federal housing finance agency, was considering the dismissal of hundreds of staff members on 19 June on the same day he assumed the role of acting director.
On Monday, Representative James Himes and Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees, respectively, sent a letter to Pulte to voice their concerns about Pulte making substantive changes to the DNI, including firing hundreds of people, without consulting Congress.
“Any large cuts would follow on a substantial downsizing that has already occurred in 2025 and risk jeopardizing the mission of an organization explicitly created after 9/11 to prevent any future such terrorist attack,” the letter reads.
Pulte also faced skepticism from the Republican senator Thom Tillis, who told reporters on Tuesday that Pulte should conduct an analysis at the DNI and “only [eliminate] the people whose jobs can be either automated or never should have been there”.
“My guess is based on his past experience, it’s going to be another hot, steaming pile of Doge shit,” Tillis, who is retiring, continued. “I think he’s an incompetent sycophant and not the right person to lead DNI, and you’re undermining ultimately what the confirmed administrator should be doing.”
Last August, former director Gabbard announced a 40% reduction in the DNI’s workforce, and said the firings were due to the office becoming bloated, inefficient and claimed that the broader intelligence community was “rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence”.
