The Man Reportedly Taking Over as Head of National Intelligence Is a Trump Cheerleader

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is expected to step down in the coming days.

Martin H. Simon/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In the coming days, Dan Coats is expected to announce his resignation from his post as the director of national intelligence—a job that involves pulling together information from all of the nation’s spy agencies and presenting it to the president. And his reported replacement is a Texas congressman best known for his over-the-top cheerleading in Donald Trump’s war against Robert Mueller. 

Coats, a former senator from Indiana, will step down soon, but there is not an exact date, the New York Times reported Sunday. Coats clashed with Trump numerous times during his tenure as one of the nation’s top spymasters. Shortly after Trump declared he believed Russian president Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Russia didn’t interfere with the 2016 election—over the assessment of American intelligence agencies—Coats publicly disagreed. When Trump unexpectedly announced that Putin would be welcome at the White House, Coats didn’t hide his uneasiness. 

Coats also issued a report this spring showing that despite Trump’s claims otherwise, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is not likely to give up his nuclear weapons through negotiations. 

Coats’ differences with Trump were apparently biggest over how the United States should perceive Russia, with Coats arguing that it should be viewed as an adversary. 

The New York Times and Axios both reported that Coats’ replacement is likely to be Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Republican and third-term Congressman who represents suburbs of Dallas. Unlike Coats, Ratcliffe seems to go out of his way to agree with Trump. Ratcliffe, who serves on the House intelligence and homeland security committees, has done his best to use his post to cheer on Trump in his battle with special counsel Robert Mueller.

During Mueller’s testimony to Congress last week, Ratcliffe accused Mueller of breaking the rules by investigating whether the president obstructed justice (Mueller did not). Ratcliffe also claimed that Mueller could not testify on Russian interference because the Department of Justice is investigating Democratic involvement.

On Sunday, just as his name was being bandied about as a replacement for Coats, Ratcliffe was appearing on CNBC to suggest that attorney general William Barr would “deliver justice” to any Obama officials who committed crimes during the investigation into the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russia. 

“They accused Donald Trump of a crime and then they try and reverse engineer a process to justify that accusation,” Ratcliffe said. “So I’m not going to accuse any specific person of any specific crime, I just want there to be a fair process to get there. What I do know as a former federal prosecutor is that it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate