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John Ratcliffe will lead the Central Intelligence Agency under President Donald Trump after the Senate confirmed him to the position by a 74-25 vote Thursday.
Twenty Democrats voted alongside their Republican counterparts to confirm Ratcliffe. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., did not vote.
Ratcliffe, a former U.S. congressman from Texas, served as director of national intelligence during the last year of Trump’s first term. As CIA director, Ratcliffe will lead an agency that has long been vilified by Trump, and he could face pressure from the White House to wield intelligence against the president’s opponents.
His hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January was far less rancorous than those of several other Trump Cabinet picks. Ratcliffe said he intends to focus on countering the threat from the Chinese government and committed to reinvestigating “Havana syndrome,” a mysterious, potentially psychogenic illness that has been reported among intelligence officers and diplomats.
Ratcliffe also sought to reassure senators that he would remain apolitical in his role as CIA director. He vowed not to impose political litmus tests for agency employees and said that although he enjoyed serving in Congress, he would relish “the opportunity to be apolitical.”
But as DNI, Ratcliffe had a history of politicizing intelligence matters. Months before the 2020 election, he declassified and released CIA documents on unverified Russian intelligence that accused Hillary Clinton of improperly trying to smear Trump during the 2016 race. At the time, former CIA Director John Brennan, whose notes were released, accused Ratcliffe of selectively declassifying information “to advance the political interests of Donald Trump and Republicans who are aligned with him.”
CORRECTION (Jan. 23, 2025, 6:03 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the number of Democrats who voted to confirm Ratcliffe. The number of Democrats was 20, not 24.