‘Doesn’t seem qualified’: Who is Bill Pulte, acting US intelligence chief?

United States President Donald Trump has appointed businessman and federal housing regulator Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence (DNI). Trump made Tuesday’s surprise announcement on social media that Pulte would replace Tulsi Gabbard , the former Hawaii congresswoman who has served as the director of national intelligence until recently. Trump said Pulte will keep his other positions in addition to taking over from Gabbard, who resigned last month after revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis. Who is Bill Pulte? Pulte, 38, a graduate of Northwestern University, has been director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) since March 2025. He is heir to his family’s residential development firm – one of the US’s largest homebuilders, PulteGroup, which was founded by his grandfather in the 1950s. He previously founded a private equity firm, Pulte Capital, and is involved in large-scale philanthropic activity. Pulte is seen as a loyal Trump supporter and has encouraged prosecutions of the president’s perceived political enemies, accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James and California’s US Senator Adam Schiff, both Democrats, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, of mortgage fraud. …