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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA. The US Senate approved the nomination

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The nomination of John Ratcliffe as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been approved by the US Senate. This is the second person named by Donald Trump to gain acceptance. During his previous service as intelligence chief, Ratcliffe was criticized for politicizing it. When proposing him for a new position, Trump praised his achievements to date.

To approve the appointment of John Ratcliffe as new chief CIA 74 senators voted and 25 were against.

Ratcliffe is a former Republican congressman and prosecutor in the first administration Donald Trump (2017-2021) served as the director of National Intelligence, coordinating the work of all services USA. In January this year, during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, he announced that the agency he heads would focus on competing with Chinawhich he assessed as “by far the greatest threat to US national security.”

According to Trump, he “told the truth to the American people.” There were also voices of criticism

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Announcing Ratcliffe's nomination in November, Trump noted that he had distinguished himself in the so-called Russiagate – Trump team's ties to Russians, “exposing it as a Hillary Clinton campaign operation.”

Trump also claimed that the former Republican congressman was the only one who “told the truth to the American people” about the content obtained from the laptop of Hunter Biden, his son Joe Biden during the 2020 election campaign, contrary to suspicions that Russian services were behind the publication of the content.

John RatcliffeJIM LO SCALZO/PAP/EPA

During his year-long service as head and coordinator of all U.S. intelligence services, Ratcliffe was criticized for the politicization of intelligence and the selective publication of intelligence information. This also concerned the US services' but unconfirmed assessment by Russian intelligence that in 2016, Hillary Clinton tried to start a scandal in connection with the Trump team's contacts with Russians to divert attention from the Democrats' emails stolen by hackers.

Still, Ratcliffe was rated as one of Trump's less controversial nominees and was confirmed second after Secretary of State Marco Rubio to win the chamber's unanimous support.

Main photo source: JIM LO SCALZO/PAP/EPA



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