President Trump’s effort to undermine trust in the midterm elections by claiming China had a role in his losing the presidency in 2020 has put one of his most trusted aides in an awkward position.
John Ratcliffe, Trump’s current CIA director, was serving as the Director of National Intelligence from May 2020 to January 2021 and oversaw the delivery of the President’s Daily Brief and other intelligence to Trump.
That’s the time period during which President Trump says he was the victim of the far-fetched and unproven plot by U.S. spy agencies that he described in his prime-time speech last week.
Pointing to declassified documents he ordered released online, Trump claimed U.S intelligence agencies began learning in 2020 that tens of millions of Americans’ voting data had been “bought, stolen or hacked by China.” But he said they kept it secret from Trump.
Ratcliffe’s role in the release of the documents and his second-term role as CIA director have come under increased scrutiny.
Critics say that Ratcliffe should stand up to Trump and threaten to resign — or actually resign — as cabinet members did in his first term, including former Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former CIA director Gina Haspel.
Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst who recently resigned after 20 years of service, described a “conspiracy of silence” in Washington and said Ratcliffe and others are enabling Trump to take increasingly authoritarian steps that should be prompting mass resignations.
She also said the release of CIA documents to bolster President Trump’s political messaging violated sweeping reforms enacted to prevent the CIA from meddling in American politics as it did during the Cold War.
“To me, it was crossing a Rubicon where the institution itself was being conscripted into the creation of a product to reinforce the president’s messaging,” Curlee said. “I never thought that I would see the CIA participating in a presidential effort to delegitimize elections in the eyes of Americans.”
But supporters of Ratcliffe — including some Democrats — argue that Ratcliffe plays a more constructive role in Trump’s second term than other current cabinet members.
One Democratic Congressional staffer said that Ratcliffe cares about the CIA workforce far more than other second-term cabinet secretaries care about the workforces they lead. The staffer, who was granted anonymity to describe sensitive conversations, said that Ratcliffe, a former Texas Congressman who served on the House Intelligence Committee, understands the importance of accurate intelligence.
“It’s very clear to me that he cares about that in the way other administration officials don’t at all,” said the staffer, referring to the CIA workforce. “He understands the value of the intelligence.”
A senior Administration official told MS NOW that Ratcliffe opposed a request from Bill Pulte, the acting Director of National Intelligence, and John Solomon, a far-right journalist, that some redactions be removed from classified documents before they were released to the public.
Solomon has pushed conspiracy theories about Democrats and was made a special government employee so he could serve on a White House task force Trump created to search through thousands of classified documents for evidence the 2020 election was stolen.
The administration official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Ratcliffe argued that removing redactions could endanger U.S. intelligence sources and reveal agency methods.
Multiple senior White House officials shared those concerns and backed Ratcliffe, the official said.
“Ratcliffe raised questions about the redactions and making sure we were not jeopardizing sources and methods,” said the senior administration official. The official said the request to remove some redactions “was ticking off some people in the agency.”
In a response to MS NOW, Solomon rejected the claim. “Any suggestion that I made any request for a passage to be declassified that Director Ratcliffe or the CIA rejected is patently false,” he said. “There have been zero disputes between the task force and the CIA over redactions.”
A spokesperson for Pulte did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House communications director Steven Cheung said It was “completely false” that there were “any disagreements within the team.” He added, “everybody, from top to the bottom, was in alignment with the speech and the declassification of documents.”
The senior administration official agreed that all of the participants in the preparation of the speech, including senior White House officials, Ratcliffe, Pulte and Solomon, were comfortable with the final text of Trump’s speech and the releases of classified documents with their initial redactions.
In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Trump accused the country’s top spy masters of keeping him in the dark. “Those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden,” Trump said. “They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else.”
Trump also said that an alleged by China to create fake ballots for Joe Biden had not been included in his intelligence briefings. “These were briefings I would get almost every day,” Trump said. “Everything was kept out that was of importance.”
But Ratcliffe himself was one of the leaders who decided what should be briefed to Trump and what shouldn’t.
CIA Director of Public Affairs Liz Lyons dismissed criticism of Ratcliffe or the CIA. “Only MSNOW would consider former officials without security clearances because of their roles in the Russia collusion hoax and Hunter Biden laptop fiasco to be serious sources with opinions worth reporting,” Lyons said.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and MS NOW contributor with no ties to the Russia collusion or Hunter Biden disputes, said Ratcliffe was trying to keep the faith of both the president and the CIA rank and file.
That can be a tall order.
“Ratcliffe certainly does need to play it both ways in some respects, as he’s got a workforce at CIA that will not react well to sources and methods being compromised based on cherry-picked intelligence to promote Looney Tunes conspiracy theories,” said Polymeropoulos.
“But at the same time, he’s gotta protect his job from the mercurial Trump. So far, he’s managed to successfully dance through the raindrops on this issue,” Polymeropoulos said.
Ratcliffe, known for his political skills and ability to read a room, got Trump’s attention for his aggressive questioning of Special Counsel Robert Mueller during his testimony to Congress in Trump’s first term. Ratcliffe then served as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence from May 2020 to January 2021.
After being named Trump’s CIA director last year, Ratcliffe won a power struggle with former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. He has risen to be a member of Trump’s inner circle and one of his most trusted aides. Ratcliffe reportedly spends more time in the White House than he does at the CIA.
A former official who served in Trump’s first term and was granted anonymity to describe internal discussions said they found Ratcliffe easy to work with and reasonable. The former official also said it is far more challenging to work for Trump in his second term.
“I don’t know much about the debate leading up to last week’s release except that Trump badly wanted this stuff out there,” said the former official. “Pretty hard to push back against Trump in this unchained second term. Trump will claim anything irrespective of the evidence available.”
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