In September 2016, the CIA forwarded a classified memo to the FBI, which was probing Russian interference in the presidential election. According to Russian intelligence sources, Hillary Clinton had reportedly sanctioned a strategy to publicly connect Donald Trump to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The Russians allegedly stated that Clinton aimed to divert public attention from the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
This intelligence may not have been groundbreaking; FBI agents were already aware of Clinton’s attempt to portray Trump as a Kremlin ally—her campaign chair was openly discussing this on CNN. Additionally, Trump himself was inadvertently aiding Clinton’s narrative by publicly urging the Russians to hack her emails, which they subsequently attempted.
While the CIA memo may have appeared obvious and less than helpful, it contained “sensitive information that could reveal sources,” as the authors warned. Consequently, access to this information was restricted to individuals with a “need-to-know” status and was advised against being released in any form. Revealing human sources—spies—could jeopardize intelligence operations and even lead to their deaths. For four years, those responsible for the document maintained its secrecy until it garnered interest from John Ratcliffe, President Trump’s director of national intelligence.
Ratcliffe’s appointment as the nation’s top intelligence adviser had been controversial, especially late in Trump’s presidency. Critics asserted that he lacked the requisite national-security experience and acted as a partisan advocate. As a freshman Republican congressman from Texas, he gained national attention by promoting a theory during hearings that Clinton had orchestrated the FBI’s probe into possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russian interference. (Ratcliffe was likely aware that this claim had been thoroughly disproven by various investigations, including one led by Senate Republicans.)
In late September 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, Ratcliffe declassified and released the CIA memo alongside notes from an intelligence briefing provided to President Barack Obama. He asserted that his actions were in response to requests from Congress for clarity regarding the FBI’s Russia investigation, although the documents offered little new insight.
Intelligence officials were outraged. History has shown that intertwining politics and intelligence is perilous, and as DNI, Ratcliffe was expected to maintain a nonpartisan approach while protecting sources and methods. Furthermore, officials cautioned that the Russians might have wanted the memo released; even four years later, any mention of Clinton, Russia, and Trump was politically charged and could disrupt the election. Gina Haspel, then CIA director (a Trump appointee), opposed the memo’s release, as did officials at the National Security Agency.
However, to Trump and some of his advisers, the memo provided a convenient narrative. The president seized upon it as fresh evidence of Clinton’s alleged role in the “Russia hoax,” a topic that consistently fueled his grievances against perceived adversaries within the intelligence community.
“It is imperative that the American people now learn what then–Vice President Joe Biden knew about this conspiracy and when he knew it,” commented the Trump campaign’s communications director at the time. “Biden must provide a full accounting of his awareness and discussions regarding Clinton’s scheme, which reached the highest levels of his administration.”
Trump also referenced the intelligence in his initial debate with Biden, accusing Clinton of orchestrating “a whole big con job” and the intelligence community of “spying on my campaign.”
Ratcliffe’s attraction to Trump has always been evident: he is a political operator prepared to stretch the boundaries of a traditionally nonpartisan role in ways that benefit the president. In November, Trump nominated Ratcliffe for an even more significant position: CIA director. The lingering question is how far he is willing to go to support Trump’s critiques of the intelligence community.
When Trump appointed Ratcliffe as DNI in 2019, he instructed him to “rein in” what the president believed were forces undermining him. “As I think you’ve all learned, the intelligence agencies have run amok,” Trump told reporters. Ratcliffe was expected to restore order. However, lawmakers expressed concerns about appointing such a staunch partisan, and amid worries about his qualifications, both Democrats and key Republicans questioned whether he had exaggerated his credentials, which Ratcliffe denied. After only five days, he withdrew his nomination, but Trump renominated him in 2020, and he was narrowly confirmed along party lines, 49–44. He received more opposing votes than any DNI in the office’s 15-year history.
Upon his nomination as CIA director, Trump again articulated his expectations: He praised Ratcliffe for uncovering alleged abuses by the FBI and former intelligence officials, and for revealing “fake Russian collusion as a Clinton campaign operation.” This time, however, the response from Washington has been subdued.
After serving as DNI for eight months, Ratcliffe is now better positioned to lead an intelligence agency. He also benefits from comparisons with Trump’s other choices for top national-security roles: at the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, who has faced allegations of sexual assault and alcohol abuse (he denies these claims); at the FBI, Kash Patel, a fervent Trump supporter who has threatened to investigate the president’s critics, including journalists; and for the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman who has expressed sympathy for some of the world’s most notorious anti-American dictators, including Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad.
Compared with these selections, Ratcliffe appears more statesmanlike, and he has essentially been designated as the next CIA director: The Senate is likely to confirm him, making Ratcliffe the first person to serve as both DNI and CIA director. Many U.S. and allied intelligence officials have indicated they would welcome this development, given the alternatives. Patel had been on Trump’s shortlist to lead the CIA, some reminded me.
However, the question of Ratcliffe’s limits remains pressing as Trump embarks on a second term. Although the DNI holds a higher rank than the CIA director, the latter position wields more power. The DNI primarily serves a managerial role, whereas the CIA director engages in operational activities. From Langley, Ratcliffe would oversee covert intelligence operations, gaining access to the identities and locations of spies. The CIA also acts as the primary liaison for foreign intelligence services, which share information that could implicate their sources if disclosed. Recent discussions with several foreign intelligence officials revealed they are taking steps to limit how much sensitive intelligence they share with the Trump administration, fearing it could be leaked or exploited for political purposes.
Some U.S. officials worry that Trump might instruct the CIA to carry out illegal activities, such as aiding paramilitary groups within the United States to secure the border, or clandestinely surveilling Americans, knowing that the president would enjoy criminal immunity for official acts due to a recent Supreme Court ruling. While these scenarios are extreme, and Trump would likely encounter internal resistance, Ratcliffe has shown a willingness to disregard established norms and practices. How would he react if the president requested—or ordered—him to undertake actions more drastic than merely declassifying documents?
Although Trump has turned to Ratcliffe twice to “rein in” the deep state, his political origin is rooted in the security state’s expansion. After graduating from Notre Dame in 1986 at just 20, Ratcliffe attended law school and entered private practice in Texas. “But something was missing,” he told senators at his DNI confirmation hearing. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, Ratcliffe was working in a Dallas high-rise that resembled the targeted buildings in New York, prompting him to consider how he could dedicate his efforts to more meaningful work.
Ratcliffe connected with Matt Orwig, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and a George W. Bush appointee. Orwig needed someone to head a joint terrorism task force, established post-9/11 to coordinate federal and regional security efforts. The objective was not only to prosecute terrorism-related crimes but also to prevent them. Ratcliffe accepted the role in 2004.
“The entire law-enforcement framework was being revamped,” Orwig recounted. “Information was flowing in from diverse authorities. It was a massive responsibility.” In 2007, Orwig stepped down, and Ratcliffe served as U.S. attorney for 11 months. He then returned to private practice, leading the Dallas office of a firm he co-founded with John Ashcroft, Bush’s first attorney general.
Ashcroft became a political mentor for Ratcliffe, an association that now appears ironic. Ashcroft essentially developed the powerful national-security apparatus that Trump and Ratcliffe now criticize. Post-9/11, the attorney general oversaw controversial applications of the PATRIOT Act and other authorities, including secret wiretapping of Americans’ phone calls. Such counterterrorism strategies expanded the powers of the Justice Department and the intelligence community, sometimes infringing on civil liberties long cherished by Americans.
Ratcliffe and Ashcroft shared a deeply conservative worldview, and Ashcroft admired Ratcliffe’s commitment to community service. Ratcliffe also served as the mayor of Heath, Texas, where he lived with his wife and two children. Ashcroft believed Ratcliffe was suited for national leadership. “We concluded he should run for Congress,” Ashcroft shared, and in 2014, Ratcliffe did just that.
Transitioning to Washington was a test of Ratcliffe’s emerging political abilities. Ralph Hall, a conservative Democrat who switched to the GOP in 2004, had long represented the fourth congressional district, where Ratcliffe resided, since 1981. At 91, Hall was the oldest-ever member of the House of Representatives, and his constituents seemed unwilling to replace him with a younger candidate. However, the Tea Party was elevating a new faction of conservatives skeptical of entrenched power, and Ratcliffe promised to bring “energetic leadership” to the district without directly targeting Hall’s age. “It’ll be up to the voters to determine if a candidate is too old,” Ratcliffe stated to reporters.
Ratcliffe received backing from conservative organizations, including the Club for Growth, and ultimately defeated Hall in a runoff. He became the first primary challenger to unseat a Republican incumbent in Texas in 20 years. His political skills were now evident, according to Todd Gillman, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. “Affable. Discreet. A fighter,” Gillman noted in a column for The Washington Post. “All of that was apparent when Ratcliffe unseated the oldest member of Congress without appearing rude.”
In Washington, Ratcliffe discovered the full extent of his talents, including a capacity for crafting political narratives that resonated with Republicans. He befriended fellow conservatives, including Trey Gowdy, another former federal prosecutor, and Tim Scott, sharing many evenings discussing their lives and political philosophies.
Gowdy helped elevate Ratcliffe’s national profile and capture Trump’s attention. During a hearing in September 2016, Ratcliffe interrogated FBI Director James Comey about the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, questioning whether officials had predetermined there was no prosecutable offense when they interviewed the presidential candidate. Ratcliffe was assertive but not abrasive. His questions were well-prepared, yet his delivery felt spontaneous. He successfully corrected Comey’s narrative regarding the FBI investigation’s timeline, leading the director to acknowledge potential misrecollection. While not a definitive moment, Ratcliffe demonstrated his ability to confound an adversary with a barrage of facts.
After Ratcliffe concluded his questioning, Gowdy passed him a note: “100 percent A+.”
“That was a pivotal moment for me where I thought, I’m exactly where I’m meant to be,” Ratcliffe recounted in a 2021 podcast hosted by Gowdy.
Ratcliffe credited Gowdy with guiding his career. “You advised me, ‘Johnny, concentrate on your strengths, enhance them, and refrain from discussing your weaknesses.’ I took that advice to heart. In essence, only appear on television to discuss topics you are knowledgeable about. Don’t attempt to master everything. Focus on your strengths; that will be noticed and benefit you. And it did,” he said.
Gowdy helped establish Ratcliffe as a preferred interrogator when congressional committees sought to question the FBI or scrutinize the Russia investigation. Ratcliffe consistently emphasized a narrative of deep-seated bias against Trump. He insinuated that political motives, rather than legitimate concerns about foreign intelligence threats, were behind the Russia probe. He also suggested that the CIA—the agency he was about to lead—may have instigated the investigation. (This was inaccurate and reflects one of the more extreme theories Ratcliffe has entertained.)
Ratcliffe’s performances left an impression on Trump. However, despite their shared conservative values, Ratcliffe, Gowdy, and Scott do not fully align with MAGA Republicans. They may share Trump’s disdain for the federal bureaucracy, but their political ideologies have been shaped by the forces leading to Trump’s rise, not Trump himself. Gowdy, who exited Congress in 2019, fell out of favor with Trump for not embracing conspiracy theories regarding Democrats spying on his campaign, while Scott competed against Trump in the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary.
For Ratcliffe, he has consistently defended Trump as a victim of an unjust system rather than as a heroic figure sent to rectify it. During one of the most-watched hearings of the Trump administration, Ratcliffe criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the phrasing in his final report, which stated that while the investigation “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Ratcliffe asserted that this was an unfair standard for any American to endure. “Donald Trump is not above the law,” he declared passionately. “But he certainly shouldn’t be below the law.”
This represented a principled stance, possibly reflecting genuine concerns about the politicization of law enforcement and intelligence. Ashcroft shared these worries and occasionally confers with Ratcliffe regarding reforming the system.
Nevertheless, when Ratcliffe takes such stances, he also lends credence to Trump’s narratives about “Crooked Hillary” and the deep state, often failing to differentiate his critiques from Trump’s.
Ratcliffe likely would not have been appointed as DNI without the influence of another pro-Trump partisan, Richard Grenell. The former ambassador to Germany was also acting intelligence director when Trump nominated Ratcliffe for a second time in 2020. The president effectively compelled the Senate to choose between the two. Grenell had been widely disliked and feared in Congress due to his incendiary rhetoric and aggressive social-media attacks. Consequently, Ratcliffe appeared as the less partisan choice.
Ratcliffe assumed office less than six months prior to the 2020 election, at a time when the intelligence agencies he led were vigilant against foreign governments attempting to manipulate political campaigns through misleading social media and divisive propaganda. Once again, Russia was a top concern.
Nothing infuriated Trump more than discussions of Russia’s attempts to assist him in winning an election. His aides learned to steer clear of the topic. The president labeled China as the foremost strategic threat to the United States, a perspective shared by many Democrats and Republicans, including Ratcliffe. However, career intelligence analysts doubted that China intended to disrupt the election, emphasizing that Beijing prioritized stability in its relationship with Washington. They argued that aiding a specific candidate, as Russia had in 2016, could backfire.
In August 2020, the intelligence community produced a classified assessment of election threats. Ratcliffe intervened, and analysts later described his insertion of a warning about China as an “outrageous misrepresentation of their analysis,” according to a subsequent report by an intelligence ombudsman.
The DNI typically does not participate in drafting intelligence assessments due to potential conflicts of interest, as he is a political appointee. Yet Ratcliffe argued that while his involvement was unusual, it was not without precedent or inappropriately timed. He contended that analysts were narrowly focused: China’s well-documented efforts to influence state and local officials, alongside its theft of corporate intellectual property and classified information, aimed at achieving political outcomes, thus constituting a form of election interference. The ombudsman also discovered that the definitions employed by the analysts assessing China and those analyzing Russia differed significantly regarding influence and interference. Ratcliffe argued these discrepancies could create a misleading impression that Russia was attempting to sway the U.S. election while China was not.
“I am confident in my conclusions based on the intelligence I have reviewed,” he stated, according to the ombudsman. “Many analysts think I am diverging from the established narrative. They fail to recognize that my stance is informed by the intelligence.”
Defenders of Ratcliffe maintain that his role as DNI compelled him to express his views, even if that meant treading into contentious political territory. “What I observed was him embodying a commitment to transparency and informing the public,” remarked a U.S. intelligence official who worked for Ratcliffe during his DNI tenure and requested anonymity. “Occasionally, he would challenge assessments and assumptions, testing their validity. His legal background influences his approach to briefings.”
Ratcliffe was not alone in broadening the threat perception regarding China: Two senior intelligence officers shared views aligning with Ratcliffe’s assessment regarding China’s interference activities. However, Ratcliffe did not express similar levels of concern about Russia, which many analysts believed posed a more immediate threat to the election. He framed the issue in a manner that supported Trump’s political narrative. Given that the DNI was making such claims, the ostensibly objective nature of intelligence began to take on a partisan hue.
When announcing Ratcliffe’s nomination for CIA director, Trump emphasized what he valued most in his selection: From revealing the Russia investigation as the alleged creation of the Clinton campaign to highlighting the FBI’s violations of civil liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a champion for Truth and Honesty with the American public,” Trump stated in a social media post. The mention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was a reference to one of Trump’s flexible theories regarding how Democrats had spied on his campaign in 2016.
He also praised Ratcliffe for publicly contesting a letter from 51 former intelligence officials who claimed that the discovery of emails on a laptop purportedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.” Ratcliffe was correct in that assertion: No evidence connected Hunter Biden’s laptop to a Russian scheme to undermine his father. However, the letter from former officials was an exercise in free speech and opinion—not something the DNI typically engages in.
In the four years since leaving office, Ratcliffe has continued to ardently criticize the intelligence community. He co-authored a September 2023 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal alongside a former aide, commenting on “a dangerous trend inside the CIA to politicize intelligence concerning China and to stifle dissenting opinions that stray from the established narrative.” He expressed particular concern regarding resistance to investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The once-marginal notion that the virus likely originated in a laboratory in China, which Ratcliffe advocates, has gained credibility, partly due to U.S. intelligence assessments.
Tim Scott remarked that Ratcliffe’s controversial stances have aged favorably. “At times, he stood alone or was in the minority and faced intense criticism from the intellectual elite in our country,” the senator said. “The reality is, he was correct—regarding the origins of COVID, the Biden laptop, and Russiagate.”
In other situations, however—such as the memo about the Clinton campaign and Russian hacking—Ratcliffe seemed to operate more like a legal representative focused on aiding his client’s argument rather than an intelligence adviser meant to assist the president in making decisions.
Unlike many others within Trump’s inner circle—most notably Kash Patel—Ratcliffe has demonstrated that he possesses boundaries. Shortly after the 2020 election, Trump extended Ratcliffe the role he had long coveted, which Trey Gowdy had previously suggested he was ideally suited for: attorney general. The president was prepared to dismiss Bill Barr, who had rejected Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. According to Michael Bender’s book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, Ratcliffe had privately informed Trump that no intelligence indicated foreign governments had hacked voting machines or altered election results. He declined Trump’s offer to become attorney general.
In this regard, Ratcliffe resembles one of the so-called adults in the room during Trump’s first administration—those officials who delayed orders or attempted to obstruct them as a check against what they perceived to be the president’s worst impulses. Yet individuals familiar with Ratcliffe have stated that this is not an accurate characterization. He is aligned with Trump’s policies and does not consider regulating the president to be within his remit. Even now, nearly eight years after the CIA, FBI, and NSA reached a unanimous, unclassified conclusion regarding Russian election interference in 2016, Ratcliffe has never publicly stated whether he agrees with one of its key findings: that the Russians aimed to assist Trump’s victory.
If he disagrees with that stance, he certainly would have articulated it, just as he has disputed other intelligence assessments he finds unsatisfactory. Yet his silence is revealing. If he concurs with that assessment and acknowledges it publicly, he jeopardizes his chances of becoming the next CIA director.
During his confirmation hearing, senators will likely inquire whether Ratcliffe intends to further Trump’s interests—not just the president’s policies—but his political biases, prejudices, and vendettas. Only Ratcliffe can answer this question. Nevertheless, among all of Trump’s nominees for national-security agencies, he comes with a discernible history in the role.
