GOP Senate panel signals support for Rep. Ratcliffe
WASHINGTON >> Rep. John Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s intelligence agencies, sought at his confirmation hearing Tuesday to push past questions about his qualifications and fierce partisanship, promising senators he would deliver unvarnished facts to a skeptical White House.
But when pressed by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ratcliffe, R-Texas, resisted taking sides on many of the most contentious intelligence matters that have divided Trump-era Washington and could offend the president, including whether Russia specifically sought to aid Trump’s campaign in 2016 and whether the president should have fired the inspector general for the intelligence agencies.
Pressed repeatedly by Democrats, Ratcliffe conceded that he disagreed with Trump that the intelligence agencies had “run amok,” but he declined to further quibble with the president in favor of more general assertions of independence.
“If confirmed as DNI, one of the things that I’ve made clear to everyone is that I will deliver the unvarnished truth,” Ratcliffe said in one exchange with Sen. Susan
Collins, R-Maine, the panel’s key swing vote. “It won’t be shaded for anyone. What anyone wants the intelligence to reflect won’t impact the intelligence that I deliver.”
But Republicans, including Collins, greeted Ratcliffe’s responses more amicably and appeared poised to push his nomination forward in the interest of installing a permanent intelligence chief at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is threatening social, economic and political systems around the world.
They were also warmer to Ratcliffe than they were last summer, when Trump first put him forward for the job but then backtracked amid bipartisan criticism of his record.
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the committee’s chairman, said after the hearing that he would hold a committee vote next week to advance Ratcliffe and work with Senate leaders to schedule a final confirmation vote shortly thereafter.
“There were no questions that he sidestepped today,” Burr said. “He answered everything and I think he did a very successful job at verifying that he is more than capable of this job and serve in an independent capacity.”