For nearly three years, the FBI investigated Donald Trump for a crime that agents knew from day one he didn't commit.
Now a man with no intelligence background just walked into the most powerful spy office in Washington.
Trump told him to start unlocking the vault – and Democrats have been scrambling to stop it ever since.
Bill Pulte Walks In and the Deep State Firings Begin
Tulsi Gabbard spent 15 months as Director of National Intelligence declassifying more than 500,000 pages of government records. She exposed the coordinated scheme to impeach Trump in 2019 and proved Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about COVID origins. Then she uncovered 120 U.S.-funded biolabs operating in secret across 30 countries.
Democrats hated every word of it.
So when Gabbard stepped down in late June to care for her husband battling a rare form of bone cancer, Senate Democrats saw their opening – and blew it.
Trump named Bill Pulte as acting DNI.
The Senate's top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, went straight to the cameras and declared Pulte unqualified – claiming he would "shape intelligence around the president's wishes."
Pulte, who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, showed up a day early to ODNI.
He asked for a full list of every employee on day one.
By the end of his first week, more than 50 ODNI staffers were gone – a significant portion of them pulled from senior positions at the National Intelligence Council.
"The deep state firings have begun," a source confirmed to NBC News.
Trump Pulls the Trigger on Declassification
Speaking to reporters before boarding the new Air Force One – the Qatari-gifted jet – for its inaugural flight, Trump made the directive explicit.
"We need to declassify almost everything," Trump said. "While he's there, I said you can declassify whatever you want."
He added: "I think that Bill will declassify."
This is not a standard White House talking point.
Federal law normally requires classified records to move through a formal agency review before release – a deliberate process designed to protect sources, methods, and foreign relationships.
Trump's instruction to Pulte cuts through that process with a political green light from the top.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe is already working alongside Pulte, with a Senate source confirming the two are coordinating with Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton of Arkansas – who has said for months the ODNI has grown "far beyond its original mandate."
They allowed a critical section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to lapse in mid-June rather than renew it while Pulte held the DNI post.
That move – killing a surveillance tool that protects American national security – exposed exactly what Democrats are afraid Pulte might find and release.
Hillary Clinton went further.
Appearing on a Democrat activist podcast, Clinton said she hoped intelligence employees were "slow-walking or refusing to share information with Pulte."
She called him "very dangerous" and a "loose cannon."
That is a former Secretary of State publicly urging federal employees to defy the lawful orders of a sitting director of national intelligence.
Crossfire Hurricane 2020 Election Files Are Next
Gabbard's declassifications traced the outline of what remains hidden.
Her office released documents exposing how the Intelligence Community's Inspector General manufactured the whistleblower complaint used to impeach Trump in 2019.
She released nearly 400 pages proving Fauci funded dangerous coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – then worked with politicized IC leadership to suppress the lab-leak theory that would have exposed him.
Those releases were the warm-up.
Officials familiar with the Director's Initiatives Group – the ODNI task force Gabbard built to excavate the intelligence community's buried files – say the remaining material covers the 2020 election, the 2017 IC Assessment on Russian interference, and the full Crossfire Hurricane file from the FBI's operation against the Trump campaign.
Trump has made no secret about what he believes is in those files.
He placed Pulte at ODNI specifically because Pulte is willing to act fast.
"Bill is there just for a fairly short period of time," Trump said. Pulte has, at most, a month or two before Jay Clayton – Trump's permanent DNI nominee and the former SEC chairman – clears his Senate confirmation hearing.
And Trump just told him to use every minute of it.
The deep state built those classification walls over decades.
Pulte has been handed the keys and told to take them apart.
Sources:
- Jack Phillips, "Trump Says He Told New Acting Intelligence Director to 'Declassify Almost Everything,'" The Epoch Times, July 1, 2026.
- "Trump Authorizes Acting DNI Bill Pulte to Declassify Intelligence Materials," One America News, July 1, 2026.
- "Bill Pulte's ODNI Purge Triggers Intel Community Civil War," The Daily Wire, June 23, 2026.
- "Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID," Office of the Director of National Intelligence, June 18, 2026.
- Amanda Macias, "DNI Tulsi Gabbard Releases Declassified Records on U.S.-Funded Biolabs Overseas," Fox News, June 12, 2026.
- "DNI Tulsi Gabbard Exposes Conspiracy Used by Congress to Impeach President Trump," Office of the Director of National Intelligence, April 13, 2026.
- Katherine Doyle, "Top Intelligence Agency Begins Mass Firings Under New Trump Appointee," NBC News, June 23, 2026.
- "Hillary Clinton Urges Federal Employees to 'Refuse to Share Information with Pulte,'" Just The News, July 2, 2026.
