Trump’s top intel pick resigns
Embattled lawmaker faced scrutiny over experience, resume
Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe withdraws from consideration amid growing questions about his experience.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s pick for national intelligence director, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, withdrew from consideration Friday after just five days as he faced growing questions about his experience and qualifications.
The move underscored the uncertainty over his confirmation prospects. Democrats dismissed the Republican congressman as an unqualified partisan and Republicans offered only lukewarm expressions of support.
The announcement leaves the intelligence community without a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader at a time when the U.S. government is grappling with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the prospect of war with Iran and the anticipated efforts of Russia or other foreign governments to interference in the American political system.
In a tweet Friday, Trump said Ratcliffe had decided to stay in Congress so as to avoid “months of slander and libel.”
Trump didn’t cite specific media reports, though multiple stories in the last week have questioned Ratcliffe’s qualifications and suggested he had misrepresented his experience as a federal prosecutor in Texas.
Ratcliffe is a frequent Trump defender who fiercely questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller during a House
Judiciary Committee hearing last week.
Even as Mueller laid bare concerns that Russia was working to interfere with U.S. elections again, Ratcliffe remained focused on the possibility that U.S. intelligence agencies had overly relied on unverified opposition research in investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
In his own statement, Ratcliffe said he remained convinced that he could have done the job “with the objectivity, fairness and integrity that our intelligence agencies need and deserve.”
“However,” he added, “I do not wish for a national security and intelligence debate surrounding my confirmation, however untrue, to become a purely
political and partisan issue.”
Ratcliffe would have replaced former intelligence director Dan Coats, who repeatedly clashed with Trump and announced his resignation a week ago.
The White House in recent days fielded a number of calls from Republicans wary of Ratcliffe’s confirmation chances and uncomfortable with his qualifications, according to two administration officials.
Several news stories in recent days called into question aspects of Ratcliffe’s resume and career, alarming some in the GOP, while a few key Republican senators already greeted his nomination tepidly.
Taking their cue from the president’s instinct to push back against the media and
fight for problematic nominees, White House officials initially planned to rally around the choice. But Ratcliffe expressed concern to the West Wing about the scrutiny, the administration officials said.
They said that though the president long admired Ratcliffe’s interviews in which he defended the White House, as well as his performance in the Mueller hearings, Trump grew convinced that the nomination battle would become a distraction — and was quick, as he often is, to blame the media for treating his administration unfairly.
The scuttled nomination deepened questions about the White House’s seemingly haphazard vetting process, but Trump
brushed aside those concerns, even crediting the media for its role in the process.
“You vet for me. I like when you vet ... I think the White House has a great vetting process. You vet for me,” Trump said. “When I give a name, I give it out to the press and you vet for me. A lot of times you do a very good job. Not always.”
North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement that he respects Ratcliffe’s decision and is committed to moving the official nomination through committee. “There is no substitute for having a Senate-confirmed director in place to lead our Intelligence Community,” Burr said.
Until then, lawmakers have urged Trump to put Sue Gordon, Coats’ No. 2, in charge once Coats steps down. But it’s unclear whether he will.
For Coats’ permanent replacement, Trump told reporters that he has a list of three people he’s working on over the weekend, and “probably Monday I’ll give you an answer.”
After Trump announced that Ratcliffe was his pick, Senate Republicans were publicly unenthusiastic on Ratcliffe’s nomination. Some expressed concerns that the House lawmaker, who was viewed as a partisan, did not come with the gravitas of Coats, who had longtime relations as a former senator.
Some senators said they had never even heard of him before his questioning of Mueller.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled a wait-and-see approach Tuesday, saying only that he looked forward to meeting with Ratcliffe and discussing his background.
McConnell, R-Ky., said that “generally speaking, I’d lean toward the president’s nominees.”
But he declined to fully endorse Ratcliffe, who served as a mayor of a small Texas town and a U.S. attorney before being elected to Congress in 2014.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said he wanted a nominee like Coats: “Someone with a deep knowledge of the intelligence community, respect for the hard work intelligence professionals do to keep us safe, and the independence and integrity to speak truth to power when necessary.”