The stakes are getting higher in Trump's 'House of Cards' current gambling concession in the back rooms inside the White House. There's a new hand-selected nominee named to fill the post for the Director of National Intelligence. The choice of a congressman from Texas is no doubt the most dangerous choice the president could make - it insults the intelligence of the American people.
"On Sunday, just hours before Trump announced his nomination, Ratcliffe declared a political victory for the president, and defeat for the Democrats, who he said “overplayed their hand.”
Who is John Ratcliffe?
FACTOID: "Ratcliffe has not denied that Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. And before Trump came along, he, too, was allied with more classic Republican conservatives, serving as an aide to former presidential candidate and current Senator Mitt Romney (Utah) during his presidential campaign, helping scout potential Cabinet picks."
SHUFFLING THE DECK: ". . . Last year, Ratcliffe’s name was floated as a possible replacement for former attorney general Jeff Sessions, whom Trump replaced with William P. Barr.
Ratcliffe, who briefly served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas under President George W. Bush and worked as the office’s chief of anti-terrorism and national security, was at the time involved in the GOP-led congressional investigations of the FBI’s Trump and Clinton inquiries as a member of the Judiciary Committee.
He joined the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year, where he has been considered the GOP’s replacement for former congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), an accomplished prosecutor skilled in executing detailed, stinging examinations of witnesses in closed-door interviews and from the dais. . . "
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His next book, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, will be published in September. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.
"The president’s intent to nominate Robert Mueller’s chief Capitol Hill inquisitor to head the nation’s intelligence community might just be the Trump administration’s most alarming personnel decision yet—even in an administration whose list of departed, disgraced, and indicted former top officials reads like a casualty list from Game of Thrones.
The news Sunday that Trump planned to tap representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) as director of national intelligence, replacing former senator Dan Coats, left many even on Capitol Hill scratching their heads: Who?
. . . Indeed, very few Americans had ever heard of the congressman from Texas’s fourth district until last Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, when Ratcliffe lambasted former special counsel Robert Mueller about “not exonerating” Donald Trump. Watching the hearing on TV with a group of journalists, I turned to my colleagues and said, “He’s auditioning to be DNI.”
That the administration is so predictable in its terrible choices should not make those terrible choices any less troubling. . . "
Did John Ratcliffe Misrepresent Role in Anti-Terrorism Case?
