Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte said Sunday his office had conducted a fourth round of "thoughtful, measured" layoffs since he took office on June 19 as part of the Trump administration's effort to refocus the intelligence community on its core national security mission.
Pulte announced the latest personnel reductions in an evening post on X, writing that his team had been "smartly, and carefully" shrinking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence while recentering the agency on "national security, the law, and the statute."
"As of this evening, we just finished a 4th round of thoughtful, measured layoffs. Thank you!" Pulte wrote.
The latest cuts continue an overhaul that began under former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who previously said she eliminated hundreds of positions during her tenure.
Since taking over as acting director, Pulte has accelerated the effort, with President Donald Trump repeatedly calling for a leaner intelligence bureaucracy after criticizing what he has described as the "deep state."
The Hill reported that Pulte's latest announcement came just days after the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced Trump's nomination of former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to become the permanent director of national intelligence.
Democrats unanimously opposed advancing Clayton after he declined during his confirmation hearing to state that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
Pulte also released another tranche of declassified intelligence documents Sunday concerning foreign threats to the 2020 election, including a CIA assessment describing "persistent concerns" about Venezuela's interest in manipulating electronic voting systems using Smartmatic technology.
The documents said intelligence agencies found evidence that Venezuelan officials had developed an interest and likely some capability to influence electronic voting systems, while stopping short of concluding that widespread election fraud had been successfully carried out.
The document release follows Trump's broader push to declassify intelligence related to election security and foreign interference.
The Washington Post reported shortly after Pulte's appointment that he began trimming the ODNI almost immediately, sending dozens of career officers back to their home intelligence agencies while removing political appointees.
The newspaper said Trump had expressed a desire for a "smaller" ODNI, arguing that too many holdovers from previous administrations remained at the organization.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has defended the personnel changes, saying they amount primarily to routine leadership transitions and the return of detailed employees to their parent agencies rather than indiscriminate mass firings.
Created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to coordinate the nation's 18 intelligence agencies, the ODNI has become a central focus of the Trump administration's broader effort to streamline the federal government while reshaping the intelligence community.