President-elect Donald Trump named John Ratcliffe as his pick for CIA director in the next administration Tuesday.
Ratcliffe, a former congressman from Texas, was director of national intelligence in Trump's first term.
"I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation’s highest Intelligence positions," Trump said in a statement Tuesday evening. "He will be a fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans, while ensuring the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH."
Ratcliffe, who was the U.S. representative for Texas’ 4th District from 2015 to 2020, was a controversial pick for director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term — so much so that the first attempt to install him, in 2019, failed.
Ratcliffe had been a federal prosecutor in Texas, and he boasted on his website about having “put terrorists in prison.” NBC News and other news organizations found no evidence that he had ever prosecuted a terrorism case. He also misrepresented his involvement in the U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case, NBC News previously reported.
In the wake of those stories, Trump announced that Ratcliffe had removed himself from consideration for director of national intelligence.
Trump nominated Ratcliffe again in 2020, and the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed him.
Congressional aides say Ratcliffe is not likely to face major difficulties being confirmed for the CIA job in another Republican-controlled Senate.
Former intelligence officers who worked with Ratcliffe said he is a relatively constructive figure compared with some other potential Trump appointees who are more hostile to the spy agencies. But it is unclear whether Ratcliffe would be ready to push back against proposals from Trump's team that could politicize the country’s most powerful intelligence agency.
As a lawmaker, Ratcliffe gained attention from the White House for his sharp criticisms of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, suggesting that FBI and intelligence officials had shown political bias and possibly committed crimes.
At his confirmation hearing in 2020 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ratcliffe tried to distance himself from Trump’s repeated claims about how a “deep state” of federal officials inside the intelligence agencies was plotting to undermine him.
Asked whether he believed there was a “deep state” within the intelligence community, Ratcliffe said: “I don’t know what that is.”
Ratcliffe will be expected to carry out Trump's agenda; Trump has vowed to root out what he calls "rogue" civil servants across the federal government. He has focused his ire on the intelligence agencies in particular, claiming they are out to undercut him.
Trump supporters have called for removing security clearances for former senior intelligence officials who speak to the news media without permission from the intelligence agencies’ leadership.
Ratcliffe has spoken in favor of Trump’s decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance.
As director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe appeared to go out of his way to help Trump politically, but he was said to have balked after the election when Trump and his aides were seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In September 2020, he declassified intelligence about a purported Russian assessment that others had labeled unreliable or possible disinformation, with the Russians supposedly saying former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally approved an effort “to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.” In the disclosure, Ratcliffe said the U.S. intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”
The move drew heated criticism from Democrats. But some saw Ratcliffe in a more favorable light when, during the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson said in a video deposition that Ratcliffe warned White House staffers against trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“My understanding was ... Director Ratcliffe didn’t want much to do with the postelection period,” Hutchinson testified. “Director Ratcliffe felt like that it wasn’t something the White House should be pursuing.”
“It felt it was dangerous for the president’s legacy,” she said. “He had expressed to me he was concerned it could spiral out of control and potentially be dangerous either for our democracy or the way things were going for [Jan.] 6.”
Former intelligence officials and Democratic lawmakers harbor concerns that Trump’s fixation with political loyalty and rooting out supposedly antidemocratic federal bureaucrats could damage the spy agencies’ work.
At the 2020 confirmation hearing for Ratcliffe, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, warned of a “constant struggle” with intelligence agencies trying to provide presidents with information that fits their political agendas.
“Every executive wants to hear what they want to hear. Every person that works for that executive wants to tell the boss what they want to hear,” King said.
