What to know about John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick for CIA director

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What to know about John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick for CIA director

2024-11-13 10:05 Last Updated At：10:10

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would appoint John Ratcliffe to serve as CIA director in his new administration.

Here are four things to know about the Republican tapped to lead the U.S. government's premier spy agency:

Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence for the final months of Trump's first term, leading American spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic and as the U.S. government contended with foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.

His past experience in intelligence makes him a more traditional pick for the job, which requires Senate confirmation, than some rumored loyalists pushed by some of Trump’s supporters.

As DNI, Ratcliffe participated in an unusual night-time news conference just weeks before the 2020 presidential election in which he and other officials accused Iran of being responsible for a barrage of emails meant to intimidate voters in the U.S.

He also faced criticism for declassifying Russian intelligence alleging damaging information about Democrats from the 2016 election even while acknowledging that it was unverified. Democrats decried the move as a partisan stunt that politicized intelligence.

Ratcliffe made headlines again weeks later when he rejected claims by dozen of former intelligence officials that the disclosure of emails from a laptop dropped off by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

“The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there’s no intelligence that supports that,” he said.

Ratcliffe was elected to Congress in 2014, but his visibility rose in 2019 as an ardent defender of Trump during the House’s first impeachment proceedings against him.

He was a member of Trump’s impeachment advisory team and strenuously questioned witnesses during the impeachment hearings.

“This is the thinnest, fastest and weakest impeachment our country has ever seen,” Ratcliffe said after the Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump over a phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

When former special counsel Robert Mueller appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Ratcliffe was one of the more ardent Republican interrogators, forcefully questioning the prosecutor and blasting the report he produced.

Though Ratcliffe ultimately got the DNI job, it wasn't smooth sailing.

In fact, he withdrew from consideration in August 2019 after just five days as he faced growing questions about his experience and qualifications.

Trump put Ratcliffe's name forward to replace the departed Dan Coats. But Democrats openly dismissed the Republican as an unqualified partisan, and Republicans offered only lukewarm and tentative expressions of support. Multiple news stories questioned Ratcliffe’s qualifications and suggested that he had misrepresented his experience as a federal prosecutor in Texas, a job he held before joining Congress.

Ratcliffe said in a statement at the time that he remained convinced that he could have done the job “with the objectivity, fairness and integrity that our intelligence agencies need and deserve.”

“However,” he added, “I do not wish for a national security and intelligence debate surrounding my confirmation, however untrue, to become a purely political and partisan issue.”

He was put up again for the job the following February and confirmed in May 2020 by a sharply divided Senate.

Ratcliffe has repeatedly sounded the alarm about China, calling the country the top threat to U.S. interests and the rest of the free world.

That view places him in good company with other incoming Trump administration officials, including Michael Waltz, Trump's pick for national security adviser, who called for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to China's involvement in the origin of COVID-19 and its ongoing mistreatment of the minority Muslim Uyghur population.

“The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically,” Ratcliffe wrote in a December 2020 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. ”Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

China is bracing for renewed tensions with the Trump administration — and possibly a tariff war — while national security and intelligence officials who track China remain concerned about economic espionage, cyberattacks, technological advances and disputes over Taiwan that could further roil relations.

Protests erupt in Paris over pro-Israel gala organized by far-right figures

2024-11-14 10:34 Last Updated At：10:40

PARIS (AP) — Protests erupted in Paris on Wednesday against a controversial gala organized by far-right figures in support of Israel. The event, intended to raise funds for the Israeli military, included Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich among its invited guests.

The demonstrations came on the eve of a high-stakes soccer match at France's national stadium against the Israeli national team, overshadowed by tensions around the wars in the Middle East. Authorities in Paris announced that more than 4,000 police officers and 1,600 stadium staff will be deployed for the game.

Smotrich, a vocal advocate of Israeli settlements, had been expected to attend Wednesday's gala, dubbed “Israel is Forever,” which was planned by an association of the same name. The group’s stated goal is to “mobilize French-speaking Zionist forces.”

After days of growing criticism of the event, Smotrich's office confirmed Wednesday that the minister would not travel to Paris to participate.

But the invitation to Smotrich drew sharp criticism from local associations, unions and left-wing political parties, prompting two protests in the French capital. The minister, a hard-line settler leader, has been accused of inflaming tensions in the West Bank and drew international condemnations this week by saying he hopes the election of Donald Trump will clear the way for Israeli annexation of the West Bank — a step that would extinguish Palestinian statehood dreams.

The French Foreign Ministry called Smotrich’s remarks “contrary to international law” and counterproductive to efforts to reduce regional tensions.

“France reiterates its commitment to the implementation of the two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security, which is the only prospect for a just and lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the ministry said in a statement.

Critics also pointed at Nili Kupfer-Naouri, president of the “Israel is Forever” association, who sparked outrage in 2023, after the Israel-Hamas war started, when she tweeted that “no civilian in Gaza was innocent.”

On Wednesday night, several hundred protesters marched through central Paris, denouncing the event as a “gala of hatred and shame.”

“Imagine if an association were hosting a gala for Hezbollah or Hamas — there’s no way the police would allow that,” said Melkir Saib, a 30-year-old protester. “The situation is just unfair.”

The march was largely peaceful, but some demonstrators broke windows at a McDonald's along the route.

A separate group, including Jewish leftist organizations opposed to racism and antisemitism, gathered near the Arc de Triomphe chanting slogans against the gala and Smotrich.

French authorities defended the event, with Paris police chief Laurent Nunez stating that the gala posed “no major threat to public order.”

The protests came days after tensions flared in Paris and Amsterdam related to the conflicts in the Mideast. A massive “Free Palestine” banner was displayed during a Paris Saint-Germain Champions League match against Atletico Madrid, while violence broke out in Amsterdam last week targeting fans of an Israeli soccer club.