Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, repeatedly declined to state that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election during a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Under questioning from Democratic senators, Clayton said the election had been “certified” for Biden but refused to go further, telling Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, “I’m not going to get into this with you.” The exchange occurred one day before Trump was scheduled to deliver a prime-time address on what he has termed “free and fair elections,” an event that, according to Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee, is expected to revisit disproven claims of fraud in the 2020 vote.

Viewed from Washington, the hearing exposed a sharp partisan divide over the role of the intelligence community. Democratic senators, including Mark Warner of Virginia, argued that Clayton’s answers signalled a willingness to accommodate Trump’s false election narratives and raised concerns about the potential use of intelligence agencies to influence future elections. Warner, who had previously supported Clayton’s nomination to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he was “bitterly disappointed.” Republican senators, led by committee chairman Tom Cotton, maintained that Clayton is a highly qualified nominee whose confirmation would end the temporary tenure of acting director Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist whose access to classified information has drawn bipartisan criticism.

Clayton also faced scrutiny over his role in issuing grand jury subpoenas to five New York Times journalists. The subpoenas, delivered to the reporters’ homes on Friday, sought the source of a story about security flaws in the new Air Force One aircraft donated by Qatar. Clayton told senators he had followed established procedures designed to protect press freedom, but declined to say whether the White House or Justice Department had ordered the action. Press freedom advocates, including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, described the subpoenas as a retaliatory move, noting that they were issued within two days of the article’s publication and hours after FBI Director Kash Patel met with Trump. The New York Times has indicated it will seek to quash the subpoenas in federal court.

Democrats also pressed Clayton on the conduct of his predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, who was present at an FBI raid on an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, earlier this year. Local officials, including Republicans, have called the raid an illegal attempt to prove long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 vote. Clayton said he had not focused on the matter until it was raised by Ossoff in a private meeting the previous day, an explanation Warner said “strains credibility.” The Intelligence Committee intends to vote on Clayton’s nomination next week, with Republican support expected to secure his advancement to the full Senate.