Trump weighs Jay Clayton for White House AI czar role

President Trump is considering Jay Clayton, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman who sued Ripple, for the White House AI czar position. CNN reported that Trump is actively seeking to fill the position within days. No formal timeline for naming a successor has been announced publicly. The possibility has unsettled parts of the crypto community, which continues to scrutinize Clayton's regulatory legacy.

Clayton currently serves as Director of National Intelligence, overseeing the 18-agency intelligence community. Trump called Clayton "a good man" and said appointing Clayton to the AI role "is a good idea." Clayton signaled his approach to AI oversight during his July confirmation hearing for the intelligence position. Clayton argued that AI requires careful handling because AI presents both opportunity and risk.

Former AI czar David Sacks left the position in March after his government employee status expired. The position has remained vacant for months while Trump searched for a replacement.

Clayton led the SEC when the agency sued Ripple in December 2020. The SEC alleged that Ripple raised $1.3 billion through unregistered securities sales dating back to 2013. A judge later found that $728.9 million in direct institutional sales qualified as unregistered offerings. Other XRP sales, including programmatic trading, fell outside that classification.

The case closed in August 2025 with a $125 million penalty. The penalty was substantially below the roughly $2 billion the SEC originally sought from Ripple. A permanent injunction still restricts how Ripple sells XRP to US institutions, even though the litigation has ended.

The lawsuit triggered a two-and-a-half-year delisting of XRP from major exchanges. The lawsuit later delayed XRP's access to spot exchange-traded funds until November 2025. Bitcoin and Ethereum had already attracted that institutional demand.