President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that John Ratcliffe, his former director of national intelligence who has been listed as a “contributor” to Project 2025, is his pick to lead the CIA.
“I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation’s highest Intelligence positions,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Ratcliffe was a three-term Republican congressman before he served in Trump’s first administration in mid-2020, capping a long road to the White House inner circle.
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, testifies before a hearing April 18, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP, FILE
Ratcliffe has not immediately commented on his being named and his nomination would need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Trump had first nominated Ratcliffe to the post a year in 2019, but Ratcliffe withdrew his nomination after bipartisan concerns emerged about his qualifications for the job and whether he had embellished his record as a federal prosecutor.
Ratcliffe was successfully confirmed a year later after Trump once again nominated him to be the nation’s top intelligence officer.
Ratcliffe first gained Trump’s attention after his strong defense of the embattled president during impeachment hearings for which he was subsequently named to be a part of Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment.
“John is an outstanding man of great talent!” Trump tweeted in announcing Ratcliffe’s first nomination.
As director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe focused his attention on issues concerning space and particularly China, which he described as the main threat to the United States.
“The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically,” Ratcliffe wrote in a December 2020 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.
“Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party,” he continued.
In 2023, Ratcliffe became a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the organization behind the controversial “Project 2025” that has been described as the organization’s blueprint for a second Trump term. Ratcliffe was not one of Project 2025’s authors but is listed as one of its 267 “contributors.”
House Judiciary Committee member Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) listens to opening statements during a markup hearing on the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Dec. 11, 2019 in Washington, D.C.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, FILE
During the presidential campaign, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025, at one point labeling some of its proposals as “abysmal.”
Ratcliffe was first elected to Congress representing East Texas’ 4th district in 2014 and he served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Judiciary Committee, the Ethics Committee and the Homeland Security Committee.
Prior to being elected to Congress, Ratcliffe was appointed in 2004 by the Bush administration to be U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.
In 2023, Trump’s defense attorneys sought to prevent Ratcliffe from testifying before a federal grand jury as part of the special counsel’s investigation of election interference following the 2020 presidential election.
Ratcliffe ultimately testified before the grand jury in April 2023.