John Ratcliffe Appointed CIA Chief: All You Need to Know About Trump's Big Pick

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would appoint John Ratcliffe to serve as CIA director in his new ministration.
Here are five things to know about Republican tapped to le U.S. government's premier spy agency:

Stint No. 2 in Trump ministration

Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence for final months of Trump's first term, leing U.S. government's spy agencies during coronavirus pandemic.

His position as DNI also me him responsible for detecting and countering foreign efforts to interfere in American politics. That experience makes him a more tritional pick for job, which requires Senate confirmation, than some rumored loyalists pushed by some of Trump's supporters.

As DNI, Ratcliffe participated in an unusual night-time news conference just weeks before 2020 presidential election in which he and or officials accused Iran of being responsible for a barrage of emails meant to intimidate voters in U.S.

Also while in that role, Ratcliffe faced criticism for declassifying Russian intelligence that purported to reveal information about Democrats during 2016 election even as he acknowledged it might not be true. Democrats decried move as a partisan stunt that politicized intelligence.

A fierce loyalist in Congress

Ratcliffe was elected to Congress in 2014, but his visibility rose in 2019 as an ardent defender of Trump during House's first impeachment proceedings against him.
He was a member of Trump's impeachment visory team and strenuously questioned witnesses during impeachment hearings.

"This is thinnest, fastest and weakest impeachment our country has ever seen," Ratcliffe said after Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump over a phone call he h with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy .

When former special counsel Robert Mueller appeared before House Judiciary Committee to testify about his investigation into Russian interference in 2016 election, Ratcliffe was one of more ardent Republican interrogators, forcefully questioning prosecutor and blasting report he produced.

Past questions over his resume

Though Ratcliffe ultimately did get DNI job, it wasn't smooth sailing.

In fact, he withdrew from consideration in August 2019 after just five days as he faced growing questions about his experience and qualifications.

Trump put Ratcliffe's name forward to replace departed Dan Coats. But Democrats openly dismissed Republican as an unqualified partisan, and Republicans offered only lukewarm and tentative expressions of support. Multiple news stories questioned Ratcliffe's qualifications and suggested that he h misrepresented his experience as a federal prosecutor in Texas.

Ratcliffe said in a statement at time that he remained convinced that he could have done job “with objectivity, fairness and integrity that our intelligence agencies need and deserve.”

"However," he ded, “I do not wish for a national security and intelligence debate surrounding my confirmation, however untrue, to become a purely political and partisan issue.”

He was nominated again following February and confirmed in May 2020 by a sharply divided Senate.

A China hawk

Ratcliffe has repeatedly sounded alarm about China, calling country top threat to U.S. interests and rest of free world.

That view places him in good company with or incoming Trump ministration officials, including Michael Waltz, Trump's pick for national security viser, who called for a U.S. boycott of 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to China's involvement in origin of COVID-19 and its ongoing mistreatment of minority Muslim Uyghur population.

" intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate U.S. and rest of planet economically, militarily and technologically," Ratcliffe wrote in a December 2020 op-ed in Wall Street Journal. “Many of China's major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to activities of Chinese Communist Party.”

China is bracing for renewed tensions with Trump ministration — and possibly a tariff war — while national security and intelligence officials who track China remain concerned about economic espionage, cyberattacks, technological vances and disputes over Taiwan that could furr roil relations.