On the evening of Tuesday, July 28, 2026, the Senate confirmed Walter "Jay" Clayton as Director of National Intelligence by a vote of 51 to 47.

Susan Collins voted yes.

The reason that matters: during his confirmation process, Clayton was asked — repeatedly, by more than one senator — a question with a factual answer. Who won the 2020 election?

He would not say.

The question he wouldn't answer

Clayton didn't deny the 2020 result. He did something more careful than that.

He acknowledged that Joe Biden was certified as the winner. What he would not do, after being pressed repeatedly, was say that Biden won.

That gap between "certified" and "won" is not an accident of phrasing. It's the exact space the last six years of election denial have lived in — the suggestion that the paperwork said one thing while the truth said another. A nominee who will say the first word but not the second is telling you something on purpose.

Maine's independent Sen. Angus King was among those who pushed him on it. Clayton kept redirecting to his qualifications rather than answer.

You can watch the exchange. It is not ambiguous.

Collins' explanation

Asked about it by CNN's Manu Raju, Collins didn't dispute that Clayton dodged. She argued it didn't matter:

"[DNI] does not certify elections, and he made very clear over and over again that Joe Biden had been certified as the winner of the election."

She said she wasn't sure what Democrats were looking for beyond that.

Here's what they were looking for: a straight answer from the person about to run American intelligence.

Collins is technically correct that the Director of National Intelligence doesn't certify elections. That's a true fact, and it's beside the point. Nobody asked Clayton to certify anything. They asked him to state, out loud, a documented outcome of an American election — the kind of basic factual claim the entire intelligence apparatus exists to get right.

The job of the DNI is to tell the President and Congress the truth about what is real, especially when the truth is unwelcome. The single most consequential lie in recent American politics is the claim that the 2020 election was stolen. A DNI nominee who won't plainly reject that lie in a confirmation hearing has failed the one test that maps directly onto the job.

Collins looked at that and voted yes.

This office in particular

The Director of National Intelligence is not a random post to be casual about.

Talking Points Memo laid out how the office was warped in recent years to feed election conspiracy theories — the specific institution that Clayton now leads, with the specific history of being pointed at 2020.

That context is what turns a hearing-room dodge into a real problem. Confirming someone who won't say Biden won, to the office that was previously used to cast doubt on Biden winning, is not a technicality. It's the whole question.

The pattern with Collins

None of this is new for Susan Collins, and that's the point.

The pattern is consistent enough to predict: she expresses concern, she gets described as a moderate, and then she votes with her party when the vote is actually held. The concern is the product. The vote is the outcome.

Mainers have watched this before on health care — Collins helped advance the cuts that put Medicaid and Medicare at risk for people in her own state after voicing reservations about them.

Here it took a slightly different shape. She didn't even express concern. She constructed a reason the dodge was fine — the DNI doesn't certify elections — and moved on.

The vote was 51 to 47. It was close. Collins was not a spare vote on a foregone conclusion; she was part of a four-vote margin. If she had wanted an answer out of Clayton before confirming him, she had all the leverage she needed to get one.

She didn't ask for it. We deserve better.

Source

Reporting by Maine Beacon (July 2026), with additional reporting from Raw Story and Talking Points Memo. Roll call: U.S. Senate Vote #211, July 28, 2026.