Acting DNI Pulte named RNC election operative Christina Norton, who lacks intelligence experience, ODNI chief of staff

On June 26, 2026, The New York Times reported that Bill Pulte, the acting Director of National Intelligence, had named Christina Norton as chief of staff of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Norton, a Republican lawyer, previously served as Pulte's chief of staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency and, before that, as the "election integrity" director of the Republican National Committee, where she oversaw the party's 2024 poll-watching program. That program drew on activists including Jack Posobiec, and on an April 2024 organizing call Norton cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. She has no publicly known experience in intelligence or national security.

Former intelligence officials and Democratic lawmakers said the appointment suggested Pulte intended to orient ODNI toward election-fraud claims ahead of the 2026 midterms. A former senior intelligence official said Norton's principal qualifications appeared to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of election-interference conspiracy theories. Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said ODNI's mission was to identify and counter foreign threats, "not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community," while Steve Bannon publicly praised the hire as presaging revelations about the 2020 election.