The Senate voted by a wide margin Thursday to confirm John Ratcliffe as the next CIA director.
The former Republican congressman and director of national intelligence was confirmed by a 74-25 vote. He faced only modest resistance from Senate Democrats, who had stalled Ratcliffe’s nomination for days over concerns that he would politicize the agency’s work — as President Donald Trump has called for overhauls in the nation’s intelligence community.
Ratcliffe is only the second Trump Cabinet nominee to get confirmed since the new president was sworn in Monday, as Republicans have prioritized national security picks. Democrats have resisted attempts to speed up the process, only greenlighting former Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as secretary of State on Monday. Republicans are expected to next bring up Pete Hegseth, the controversial Defense secretary nominee.
Ratcliffe’s largely frictionless confirmation process is a testament to his experience atop the U.S. intelligence community in Trump’s first term — and how far the Senate GOP has come around to the new president’s view that he needs close allies atop America’s key spy agencies in order to reform them.
The Texas Republican rose to prominence in the House after grilling special counsel Robert Mueller during a congressional hearing on his Russian election interference investigation. His seeming willingness to go to bat for Trump fed anxiety that Ratcliffe would spin intelligence analysis to aid the then-president when Trump nominated him to be his director of national intelligence in 2019.
Ratcliffe was initially forced to withdraw from consideration for the role due to those concerns, as well as questions about whether he had inflated his resume. He was confirmed when he was nominated for the same position roughly a year later on a narrow 49-44 vote.
During a breezy confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week, Ratcliffe insisted time and again under questioning that he would speak truth to power if confirmed as head of the prestigious spy agency. The panel voted 14-3 to advance his nomination.
