Trump replacing top intel official after tensions
President tweets that Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas will take over the position next month
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Sunday that Dan Coats will step down as director of national intelligence after a tenure in which the two were often at odds over Russia, North Korea and the president’s own attacks on the intelligence community.
“I am pleased to announce that highly respected Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas will be nominated by me to be the Director of National Intelligence,” Trump tweeted. “A former U.S. Attorney, John will lead and inspire greatness for the Country he loves. Dan Coats, the current Director, will be leaving office on August 15th. I would like to thank Dan for his great service to our Country. The Acting Director will be named shortly.”
Ratcliffe has been a staunch defender of Trump. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he sharply questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller at last week’s hearing.
Coats had long been expected to depart of his own accord, an administration official said, but he ended up staying on longer so it would not seem as if he was forced out during a time of conflict with Trump. In a meeting last week, Coats told Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that he was ready to move on.
Coats, who helped devise President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservative” agenda, had been an important link between the Trump administration and the Republican establishment. With Coats gone, those ties, at least on national security matters, are likely to weaken.
But Trump’s grip on the Republican Party has only strengthened, and he has long since demonstrated that members of the party’s establishment need his support far more than he needs theirs.
Trump’s frustration with Coats was reignited in recent months during spring weekends spent at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to people who spoke with him at the time.
Trump had weighed firing Coats since he took issue with the president’s assertions, after a 2018 meeting in Finland with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, challenging the intelligence community’s conclusions that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential race. Coats also questioned the wisdom of a potential White House meeting between the two leaders.
Some of the president’s political advisers had encouraged him to oust Coats, but he had been shielded by Pence, a longtime protégé. Coats served as a senator from Indiana, and Pence was the state’s governor.
His pending departure has been whispered about in Washington for weeks, and Axios first reported Sunday that Ratcliffe was the favorite to replace him. The New York Times then reported that Coats’ resignation was imminent.
Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, favored Ratcliffe as a replacement for Coats, as did several of Trump’s more conservative allies, according to administration officials. However, others in Trump’s group of advisers were skeptical that Ratcliffe was the right choice. Ratcliffe’s name has periodically been floated for attorney general, a job he is said to prefer over the intelligence director post but one unlikely to be available anytime soon.
In picking Ratcliffe, the president tapped a lawmaker who, unlike Coats, has come to his defense against the investigation into Russia’s efforts to aid Trump’s campaign in 2016.
Ratcliffe met privately with Trump at the White House on July 19, according to administration officials, for a meeting about whether he would take the job. Less than a week later, Ratcliffe accused Mueller of not following Justice Department guidelines when the special counsel said he could not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. If a special counsel cannot bring charges, he should not presume to say a target was not cleared, Ratcliffe said.
“So Americans need to know this as they listen to the Democrats and socialists on the other side of the aisle as they do dramatic readings from this report that Volume II of this report was not authorized under the law to be written,” Ratcliffe said of the portion of Mueller’s report that described how the president sought to impede the investigation.
“It was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the Justice Department, and it was written in violation of every DOJ principle about extra prosecutorial commentary,” Ratcliffe added. “I agree with the chairman this morning when he said Donald Trump is not above the law. He’s not. But he damn sure shouldn’t be below the law, which is where Volume II of this report puts him.”
Critics disagreed with Ratcliffe’s conclusion, noting that department guidelines call for a special counsel to provide a report “explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” at the end of an investigation.
Before the Finland meeting, Coats had become increasingly vocal in defending the intelligence agencies and their assessment that the Kremlin has been pursuing a campaign of cyberattacks aimed at undermining American democracy. Though Coats has long held those views, he made a deliberate decision to emphasize the intelligence agencies’ findings before the summit, in what some saw as a challenge to the White House.
At a security conference in Aspen, Colo., soon after, Coats expressed surprise about reports that Trump could invite Putin to the White House. “That is going to be special,” he said in a notably unguarded moment.
Political aides to Trump seized upon the performance to suggest in private discussions that the intelligence chief was disloyal.
Intelligence officials had expected a fall departure for Coats, perhaps soon after Labor Day. He was scheduled to speak at an annual intelligence conference in September, and some U.S. officials said they expected him to depart soon after that. But Coats ultimately did not wait.
Ratcliffe, who served as mayor of Heath, Texas, and as a U.S. attorney, boasts on his website that he once “arrested 300 illegal aliens in a single day.” He was elected to the House in 2014, ousting Rep. Ralph Hall, who at 91 was the oldest member of the House in history, in a Republican primary with the support of tea party activists.
Ratcliffe quickly established a reputation as a stalwart conservative. He has a 96 percent lifetime rating by the American Conservative Union and earned a 100 percent in the most recent ranking by Heritage Action for America.