President-elect Donald Trump has announced he has selected John Ratcliffe as director of the CIA.
“I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation’s highest Intelligence positions. He will be a fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans, while ensuring the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH,” Trump wrote in a message sent on the evening of Nov. 12, the latest in a flurry of Tuesday evening appointments.
Ratcliffe, an attorney, served as director of national intelligence during the first Trump term. He was previously a Republican congressman from Texas and an anti-terrorism and national security chief for Eastern Texas.
Originally from Illinois, Ratcliffe earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame before obtaining a law degree from Southern Methodist University. He was later U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and, from 2004 until 2012, mayor of Heath, Texas, a community in metro Dallas-Fort Worth.
While in Congress, he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
During Trump’s first term, Ratcliffe made a name for himself as a staunch Trump loyalist.
Ratfcliffe won approval that same month.
While still in Congress, Ratcliffe was among the lawmakers questioning the foundations of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.
In late 2020, Ratcliffe said that the elections that year were marred by foreign interference—a claim with which some other intelligence officials disagreed.
After serving as DNI, Ratcliffe remained a consistent defender of Trump, including against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump, unsealed in the spring of 2023.
That same year, Ratcliffe testified before Congress that a lab leak in China, once dismissed as a debunked conspiracy theory, constituted “the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense” for the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ratcliffe’s nomination has already sparked responses on X.
