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

Key points

• 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.
• 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.