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Trump's Pick for National Intelligence Director Withdraws

VOA News

   Updated at 4:37 p.m. Aug. 2.

   U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for intelligence chief has withdrawn
   his nomination under heavy media pressure, the president announced
   Friday.

   Representative John Ratcliffe, who had been nominated for director of
   national intelligence, "decided to stay in Congress where he has done
   such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our
   Country," Trump wrote Friday on Twitter.

   The president blamed recent media scrutiny for the decision, saying
   that Ratcliffe preferred to withdraw rather than suffer "months of
   slander and libel."

   After Trump announced the nomination Sunday, media reports began to
   focus on Ratcliffe's strong support for the president, instances in
   which he inflated his credentials and his relative lack of intelligence
   experience.
   Presidential ally
   Ratcliffe was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2014 and
   holds posts on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees. He's
   backed Trump on everything from Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the
   Supreme Court to the president's hard-line immigration policies, andhe
   has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned
   Parenthood.
   Since Trump took office, Ratcliffe has voted in alignment with the
   president nearly 92% of the time, according to
   a[1]FiveThirtyEightanalysis.His district is the seventh-most Republican
   one in the U.S., according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, and went
   heavily for Trump in the 2016 election.

   In explaining his withdrawal, Ratcliffe said he did not want the debate
   abouthis nomination to "become a purely political and partisan issue."
   He wrote on Twitter that it "deserves to be treated as an American
   issue."

   Cracks in credentials
   Ratcliffe gained notice following a headline-generating exchange with
   former special counsel Robert Mueller at a congressional hearing in
   late July, when he denounced the investigation's look at potential
   obstruction of justice by the president.
   The attention brought scrutiny to his credentials. After a stint as
   mayor of Heath, Texas, Ratcliffe worked as a U.S. attorney and federal
   terrorism prosecutor. While at the U.S. Justice Department, his office
   was involved in numerous immigration raids in Texas, and in a case
   against a nonprofit funneling money to terrorist group Hamas.
   Ratcliffe has often highlighted that case, U.S. vs. Holy Land
   Foundation, as a credential, but he [2]misrepresentedhis role in
   it,ABCreported.

   Though past [3]press releases and his own [4]official websitesay
   Ratcliffe served as a special prosecutor in the case and convicted
   those found guilty, he doesn't appear in court records, and the
   attorneys and officials involved didn't recall him, according toABC.
   Ratcliffe's office said that heinvestigatedissues behind the first
   trial in the case.
   Another reportcast doubt on the [5]success of his office's immigration
   raids.
   Intelligence experience
   Critics said Ratcliffe had markedly less intelligence experience than
   his predecessors. Since the position was established in 2004, the
   directors have typically had decades of experience in the military or
   foreign service and had prior roles in the intelligence community.

   James Clapper, a pick of former President Barack Obama, had previously
   directed two different U.S. intelligence agencies prior to his
   unanimous Senate confirmation in 2010, while Mike McConnell, chosen by
   former President George W. Bush,had already headed the National
   Security Agency. Dan Coats, the outgoing director, had two years in the
   military, eight on the Senate Intelligence Committee and four as an
   ambassador.
   Trump said that he would announce another choice for the position soon.

   The director of national intelligence oversees the 17 agencies that
   make up the U.S. intelligence community and advises thepresident,
   theNational Security Council and the Homeland Security Council within
   the executive branch.

   Coats has resigned effective Aug. 15. In his two years on the job,
   Coats had publicly broken with the president on security issues
   involving North Korea, Iran and Syria.

References

   1. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/house/
   2. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-pick-inteligence-director-misrepresented-role-anti-terror/story?id=64646682
   3. https://ratcliffe.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=240
   4. https://ratcliffeforcongress.com/uncategorized/theratclifferecord-putting-terrorist-sympathizers-in-prison/
   5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trumps-pick-to-lead-us-intelligence-claims-he-arrested-300-illegal-immigrants-in-a-single-day-he-didnt/2019/08/01/12b958e4-b3b7-11e9-8e94-71a35969e4d8_story.html?utm_term=.90728092153f

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