WASHINGTON – The Senate on Thursday easily confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, making him the second key player to join the new Republican administration’s national security and foreign policy team.
Ratcliffe, who formerly served as director of national Intelligence in Trump’s first term, won on a 74-25 vote. The Senate confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio just hours after Trump was inaugurated and the White House changed hands on Monday.
Ratcliffe sailed through his Jan. 15 confirmation hearing, during which he said repeatedly that he would not hire or fire employees based on their political views. The former House Republican congressman from Texas also vowed to hire and promote spies and analysts based on merit alone, in a reference to Trump’s campaign to weed out diversity programs from the federal government.
Republicans and Democrats alike praised Ratcliffe, calling him well-qualified as a former member of the House intelligence committee and top federal prosecutor in Texas. He was voted out of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday along bipartisan lines, 14-3.
During his nomination hearing, Ratcliffe insisted he would not waver when it came to rejecting political pressure from the White House.
“If you look at my record as DNI, that never took place. That is never something anyone has alleged, and it is something that I would never do,” Ratcliffe told the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.
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Ratcliffe also pledged repeatedly at his nomination hearing to focus more on the rising threat posed by China and to upgrade the agency’s technological capabilities to improve its intelligence collection efforts.
“Today we face what may be the most challenging national security environment in our nation’s history,” Ratcliffe said.
“The Chinese Communist Party remains committed to dominating the world economically, technologically and militarily,” he said. “Transnational criminal organizations are flooding American communities with violence and deadly narcotics. The Russia-Ukraine War wages on,” and Iran “is closer to nuclear breakout than ever before.”
