Coats is out as Director of Intelligence. Trump nominates a suckup to replace him.

This is not surprising.

I don’t know that this guy’s gonna pass muster.

Hyperpartisan Congressman who has no experience.

Great choice, Trump! No doubt that Putin approves!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...icize-n1035821

Intel officials worry Trump's pick for top spy will politicize the job
July 29, 2019, 5:29 PM CDT

WASHINGTON — Hours before President Donald Trump announced him as the pick to be the new director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe was on Fox News saying the Russia investigation may have been tainted by a criminal conspiracy.

"What I do know as a former federal prosecutor is that it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration," the Texas Republican said Sunday, speaking about the origins of the FBI's investigation into Trump campaign contacts with the Russians.

Ratcliffe didn't specify which crimes, and he didn't offer any evidence. None have surfaced on the public record.

But statements like that from Ratcliffe, rated one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, are causing disquiet among current and former intelligence officials, who worry that as the nation's top spy Ratcliffe will politicize what is supposed to be one of the most nonpartisan jobs in Washington.

"Mr. Ratcliffe appears to be somebody who is more interested in pleasing Donald Trump," President Barack Obama's CIA director John Brennan, an NBC News analyst, said on MSNBC.

The intelligence community will fight hard against a threat to its culture of avoiding open partisanship, former senior CIA operations officer John Sipher told NBC News. "It's all about professionalism and taking the world as it is. There is no such thing as Democratic or Republican intelligence. It is what it is, no matter how inconvenient."

Dan Coats, the former Indiana senator whose departure as DNI paved the way for Trump to pick Ratcliffe, appeared to live by that code. He discussed intelligence assessments in public that were at odds with Trump's worldview, and he focused on the issue of Russian election interference, an issue Trump appears to view as a threat to his legitimacy. As NBC News has previously reported, that candor contributed to a strain between Coats and Trump that led to the former's departure.

Ratcliffe, by contrast, has focused on what he believes was misconduct at the heart of the Russia investigation and has spent little time talking about Russia's interference in the American political system.

In last week's hearing with former special counsel Robert Mueller, Ratcliffe attacked the premise of Mueller's report and accused Mueller of violating special counsel rules. He also questioned whether Russia provided false information to a former British intelligence officer who wrote an infamous dossier, which Republicans have sought to portray as a key aspect of the Mueller probe, but which FBI officials say played a minor role.

"I very much agree with your determination that Russia's efforts were sweeping and systematic," Ratcliffe told Mueller. "I think it should concern every American. That's why I want to know just how sweeping and systematic those efforts were. I want to find out if Russia interfered with our election by providing false information through sources to Christopher Steele about a Trump conspiracy that you determined didn't exist."

Ratcliffe, 53, has little experience in national security or intelligence. He was elected in 2014 with the support of the Tea Party, ousting 91-year-old incumbent Republican Ralph Hall. Ratcliffe had been the mayor of Heath, Texas — population 7,000 — from 2004 to 2012.

During that time, Ratcliffe became a federal prosecutor, named chief of anti-terrorism and national security for the Eastern District of Texas. In 2007, Ratcliffe was named the district's acting U.S. attorney by President George W. Bush.

Although Ratcliffe's website says he "put terrorists in prison," there is no evidence he ever prosecuted a terrorism case.

While he was U.S. attorney in East Texas, Ratcliffe was appointed as a special prosecutor in a terrorism funding case in Dallas, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, in which a Muslim charity was found guilty of funneling money to the Palestinian terror group.

A 2015 news release said, "He convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization."

But Ratcliffe's name does not appear in the Holy Land trial record. Asked about that, his spokesman said Ratcliffe was appointed by the attorney general to investigate what went wrong in the first of two trials in the case, which ended in a mistrial.

A former Justice Department official said Ratcliffe was appointed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey as a special prosecutor to look into allegations, involving a juror and one of the defendants, that surfaced after the first prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation ended in a mistrial.

“Nothing came of it,” the former official said. He said Ratcliffe made no recommendations and was not involved in the retrial that resulted in convictions.

When Obama took office, Ratcliffe went into private practice, forming the firm Ashcroft, Sutton, Ratcliffe — a Texas outpost of the Washington, D.C., law firm founded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

He served briefly on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012.

Ratcliffe's once completely rural district is now partly a distant suburb of Dallas. Trump won 75 percent of the vote there in 2016. The population is 73 percent white, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

Reactions from Republicans to Trump's selection of Ratcliffe were tepid. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, which will hold Ratcliffe's confirmation hearing, waited a day before congratulating Ratcliffe in a statement that did not quite endorse him.

Burr made a point of praising the deputy director of national intelligence, Sue Gordon, a former CIA official who is widely respected throughout the government. It's not clear that Ratcliffe will keep her in place, and Trump did not say whether he would name her as the acting director before Ratcliffe is confirmed.

"I can tell you this — if he appoints anyone other than Sue Gordon as acting DNI, the Senate will raise holy hell," a Democratic congressional official said.

Former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg interacted with Ratcliffe when Ratcliffe was a U.S. attorney and Rosenberg was at the Justice Department.

"Prior to the Mueller hearing, if somebody had asked me about John, I would have said he was an honorable and decent guy," Rosenberg, now an NBC News analyst, said. "I thought his treatment of Mueller was unfair, disingenuous and wrong, and it gives me pause."

And Brennan and Clapper weren’t suckups? Radcliffe is far smarter than those knuckleheads put together. They might be indicted in another year.

This is not surprising.

I don’t know that this guy’s gonna pass muster.

Hyperpartisan Congressman who has no experience.

Great choice, Trump! No doubt that Putin approves!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...icize-n1035821

Intel officials worry Trump's pick for top spy will politicize the job
July 29, 2019, 5:29 PM CDT

WASHINGTON — Hours before President Donald Trump announced him as the pick to be the new director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe was on Fox News saying the Russia investigation may have been tainted by a criminal conspiracy.

"What I do know as a former federal prosecutor is that it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration," the Texas Republican said Sunday, speaking about the origins of the FBI's investigation into Trump campaign contacts with the Russians.

Ratcliffe didn't specify which crimes, and he didn't offer any evidence. None have surfaced on the public record.

But statements like that from Ratcliffe, rated one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, are causing disquiet among current and former intelligence officials, who worry that as the nation's top spy Ratcliffe will politicize what is supposed to be one of the most nonpartisan jobs in Washington.

"Mr. Ratcliffe appears to be somebody who is more interested in pleasing Donald Trump," President Barack Obama's CIA director John Brennan, an NBC News analyst, said on MSNBC.

The intelligence community will fight hard against a threat to its culture of avoiding open partisanship, former senior CIA operations officer John Sipher told NBC News. "It's all about professionalism and taking the world as it is. There is no such thing as Democratic or Republican intelligence. It is what it is, no matter how inconvenient."

Dan Coats, the former Indiana senator whose departure as DNI paved the way for Trump to pick Ratcliffe, appeared to live by that code. He discussed intelligence assessments in public that were at odds with Trump's worldview, and he focused on the issue of Russian election interference, an issue Trump appears to view as a threat to his legitimacy. As NBC News has previously reported, that candor contributed to a strain between Coats and Trump that led to the former's departure.

Ratcliffe, by contrast, has focused on what he believes was misconduct at the heart of the Russia investigation and has spent little time talking about Russia's interference in the American political system.

In last week's hearing with former special counsel Robert Mueller, Ratcliffe attacked the premise of Mueller's report and accused Mueller of violating special counsel rules. He also questioned whether Russia provided false information to a former British intelligence officer who wrote an infamous dossier, which Republicans have sought to portray as a key aspect of the Mueller probe, but which FBI officials say played a minor role.

"I very much agree with your determination that Russia's efforts were sweeping and systematic," Ratcliffe told Mueller. "I think it should concern every American. That's why I want to know just how sweeping and systematic those efforts were. I want to find out if Russia interfered with our election by providing false information through sources to Christopher Steele about a Trump conspiracy that you determined didn't exist."

Ratcliffe, 53, has little experience in national security or intelligence. He was elected in 2014 with the support of the Tea Party, ousting 91-year-old incumbent Republican Ralph Hall. Ratcliffe had been the mayor of Heath, Texas — population 7,000 — from 2004 to 2012.

During that time, Ratcliffe became a federal prosecutor, named chief of anti-terrorism and national security for the Eastern District of Texas. In 2007, Ratcliffe was named the district's acting U.S. attorney by President George W. Bush.

Although Ratcliffe's website says he "put terrorists in prison," there is no evidence he ever prosecuted a terrorism case.

While he was U.S. attorney in East Texas, Ratcliffe was appointed as a special prosecutor in a terrorism funding case in Dallas, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, in which a Muslim charity was found guilty of funneling money to the Palestinian terror group.

A 2015 news release said, "He convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization."

But Ratcliffe's name does not appear in the Holy Land trial record. Asked about that, his spokesman said Ratcliffe was appointed by the attorney general to investigate what went wrong in the first of two trials in the case, which ended in a mistrial.

A former Justice Department official said Ratcliffe was appointed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey as a special prosecutor to look into allegations, involving a juror and one of the defendants, that surfaced after the first prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation ended in a mistrial.

“Nothing came of it,” the former official said. He said Ratcliffe made no recommendations and was not involved in the retrial that resulted in convictions.

When Obama took office, Ratcliffe went into private practice, forming the firm Ashcroft, Sutton, Ratcliffe — a Texas outpost of the Washington, D.C., law firm founded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

He served briefly on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012.

Ratcliffe's once completely rural district is now partly a distant suburb of Dallas. Trump won 75 percent of the vote there in 2016. The population is 73 percent white, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

Reactions from Republicans to Trump's selection of Ratcliffe were tepid. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, which will hold Ratcliffe's confirmation hearing, waited a day before congratulating Ratcliffe in a statement that did not quite endorse him.

Burr made a point of praising the deputy director of national intelligence, Sue Gordon, a former CIA official who is widely respected throughout the government. It's not clear that Ratcliffe will keep her in place, and Trump did not say whether he would name her as the acting director before Ratcliffe is confirmed.

"I can tell you this — if he appoints anyone other than Sue Gordon as acting DNI, the Senate will raise holy hell," a Democratic congressional official said.

Former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg interacted with Ratcliffe when Ratcliffe was a U.S. attorney and Rosenberg was at the Justice Department.

"Prior to the Mueller hearing, if somebody had asked me about John, I would have said he was an honorable and decent guy," Rosenberg, now an NBC News analyst, said. "I thought his treatment of Mueller was unfair, disingenuous and wrong, and it gives me pause." Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

You manning your flack gun...bombs away!!
What ya know...another self anointed 5-stars thread!!
Do we can you Mr. narcissist now??
Who would have ever thunk it...

OP is worried that "Politicization" of an agency might occur - Wrong
DPST's worry it will not be Leftist radical DPST politicization. !!!!


Off topic- SomeOne actually posted an article and a Link - there is indeed progress.

Thank You for your effort - VP!

It's laughable that dim-retards are too stupid to realize that Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, etc., already politicized those agencies, and that the politicos in those agencies need to be flushed out.

It's laughable that dim-retards are too stupid to realize that Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, etc., already politicized those agencies, and that the politicos in those agencies need to be flushed out. Originally Posted by I B Hankering

beat me to it.

was going to point out that the agencies were already politicized.


the hand wringing over ratcliff is laughable.

the hand wringing over ratcliff is laughable. Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm

Which means they are scared of him which I think is part of the desired effect.

They forget who owns the Senate.

He will pass. Be afraid, deep state. Be very afraid.

by Philip Ewing
August 2, 2019


President Trump abruptly dropped his intention to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, to serve as director of national intelligence on Friday.

Coolness from Senate Republicans and reports in the press about past overstatements about Ratcliffe's record appear to have prompted the White House to calculate that it was wiser to cut bait now than try to press ahead against those headwinds.

Trump wrote on Twitter that Ratcliffe had been treated "unfairly" in media coverage and that he'd told the congressman it might be easier to just stay in the House.

Trump also wrote that he would announce another nominee to become director of national intelligence "shortly."

The position is to become vacant with the resignation of Dan Coats, with whom Trump never developed a rapport.

Tensions between the president and the intelligence community also appear to have worsened over the Ratcliffe episode, as people in the spy world made clear via the newspaper coverage how unqualified they believed he is and how unwelcome he would be atop the sprawling alphabet soup of domestic and foreign spy agencies.



Copyright 2019 NPR

Another abject failure by Trump.

At least he blamed it on the media.

Of course Trump didn't check to see exactly how far from the truth Ratcliffe was about his record. Or his Deep State conspiracy mongering.

And as we all know, truth doesn't really matter to Trump. He never met a conspiracy theory he didn't think was YUGE.

Poor suckup Ratcliffe. Maybe he'll get his clock cleaned in 2020 as Texas turns bluer and bluer, though it's not likely behind the Pine Curtain in East Texas, home of the ever brilliant Louis Gohmert.

Good thing for him that he didn't have to bare all before the people.

Next!

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckra...cliffe-dni-job

Trump Drops Ratcliffe For DNI Post
on June 28, 2018 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images North America
By Josh Kovensky
August 2, 2019 2:20 pm


Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) is no longer going to be President Donald Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence, Trump tweeted on Friday.

Ratcliffe faced criticism this week for allegedly misrepresenting his record and for having little to no intelligence experience. He was mainly known as an attack dog in Congress for Trump.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 5h
Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media. Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people....


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
....John has therefore decided to stay in Congress where he has done such an outstanding job representing the people of Texas, and our Country. I will be announcing my nomination for DNI shortly.

51.1K
1:06 PM - Aug 2, 2019
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20.3K people are talking about this

While in Congress, Ratcliffe peddled various conspiracy theories about deep state attempts to take down Trump, while spearheading the GOP’s strategy to defend Trump from the special counsel probe by ‘investigating the investigators.’

But as the week wore on since Trump’s announcement on Sunday that he intended to nominate him, reports regarding alleged misrepresentations in Ratcliffe’s record began to mount.

A former federal prosecutor in Texas’s rural eastern district, Ratcliffe headed the office’s anti-terrorism and national security unit before being named an interim U.S. Attorney. While in Congress, he claimed to have prosecuted a top terrorist financing case while there.

But reporters found no evidence that Ratcliffe had been involved in the terrorist financing case.

In another case, the Washington Post reported, Ratcliffe claimed to have rounded up 300 illegal immigrants in one day. That also did not occur.

The director of national intelligence oversees the country’s spy community, and prepares the president’s daily intel briefing.

Ratcliffe had been poised to replace outgoing DNI Dan Coats, who had a rocky at best relationship with Trump.

Coats and Trump clashed repeatedly. At one point, after Trump issued an executive order commanding the intelligence community to cooperate with Attorney General Bill Barr’s investigation of the Russia probe investigators, Coats issued a statement assuring the public that the intelligence community would “continue” to share “apolitical intelligence” with the rest of the government.

As scandal around Ratcliffe’s pending nomination brewed, the Trump administration has reportedly been reviewing whether it can nominate a successor to Coats outside the line of succession.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump has been trying to prevent Sue Gordon – Coats’ second-in-command – from taking his position. The Trump administration is reportedly seeking members of the office of the director of national intelligence who have worked there for longer than 90 days.

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said he was “grateful that [Ratcliffe] will continue serving the people of Texas in the House.”

Saying that there is “no substitute for having a Senate-confirmed director,” Burr added that he remains “committed” to moving an “official nomination through regular order once it is submitted to the Senate.”

While Ratcliffe may be gone, things may not get better. Potential alternative nominees for DNI include Fred Fleitz, a Frank Gaffney associate and former CIA analyst known for his vitriolic anti-muslim views. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and a top Trump attack dog in his own right, has also been floated.