Virus Threat Dominates Senate Hearing on Trump’s Spy Chief Pick

(Bloomberg) -- Representative John Ratcliffe told senators one of his top priorities if he’s confirmed as the nation’s spy chief will be gathering intelligence on the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, a question that overshadowed national security threats from Russia’s election interference to terrorism on Tuesday.

Ratcliffe gave the pledge during a confirmation hearing on his nomination by President Donald Trump to serve as director of national intelligence. It was the first hearing on any topic for a Senate returning to work while adjusting to the need for social distancing in the pandemic. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee appeared in shifts to ask questions, many with face masks dangling under their chins when they spoke.

Amid increasing pressure by the administration for intelligence agencies to blame China for the scale of the pandemic that began there, Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican and former federal prosecutor, said that he would ensure “the intelligence community will be laser-focused on getting all of the answers that we can regarding how this happened, when this happened.”

But Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Trump may be “conclusion-shopping,” pushing intelligence agencies to back a theory that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

“The question should be, ‘Where did the virus come from?’” King said. “Not, ‘Don’t you think it came from a lab?’”

More broadly, Democratic senators suggested that Trump chose Ratcliffe as a loyalist who would undermine the intelligence agencies the president has long suspected of being against him.

“Unfortunately, what we have seen from the president, ever since he came into office, is an unrelenting and undeserved political attack upon the professional women and men of our intelligence agencies,” said Senator Mark Warner, the committee’s top Democrat. “The president attacks our intelligence agencies for one simple reason: because unvarnished truth and unembellished analysis are not welcome in this White House.”

Ratcliffe withdrew from consideration for the post last year amid tepid Republican support and accusations that he’d exaggerated his qualifications.

In his testimony, Ratcliffe pledged “to deliver timely, accurate and objective intelligence, and to speak truth to power, be that with this Congress or within the administration.”

Senator Richard Burr, the panel’s Republican chairman, said in a time of crisis the members of the intelligence community “deserve, and the country needs, the certainty of a permanent, Senate-confirmed director of national intelligence.”

Russian Interference

Burr and Warner asked Ratcliffe about the committee’s bipartisan conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to help Trump win, echoing the findings of intelligence agencies. Ratcliffe said “I have no reason to dispute the committee’s findings” but also cited the House Intelligence panel’s contrary finding that there was no tilt toward Trump.

Ratcliffe, the former mayor of Heath, Texas, became a Trump favorite after he stood out in 2018 -- along with current White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other conservative lawmakers -- on a House task force pursuing the theory that anti-Trump bias and support for Democrat Hillary Clinton tainted the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe early on.

He later became a leading House critic of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The White House took note of his aggressive questioning of Mueller before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2019.

Pressed by Democrats, Ratcliffe testified that he doesn’t think the intelligence community has “run amok,” as Trump has said. But he minimized specific differences with the president. Asked whether there’s a “deep state,” as Trump often complains, Ratcliffe said, “I don’t know what that means.”

He said he believed that Trump has accurately portrayed the severity of the coronavirus threat and cited only one policy disagreement with the president -- on his decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria.

‘Both Ways’

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, questioned Ratcliffe on whether he would allow warrantless spying on Americans and whether he would stand up for the rights of whistle-blowers. Ratcliffe said only that he would do what’s required by law.

“You want to have it both ways,” Wyden said. “You want to try to portray yourself as a defender of the Constitution and then you water it down with the specifics.”

Ratcliffe’s nomination appears likely to pass, as Burr and other Republicans cite the need for the intelligence community to have a confirmed leader nine months after the departure of former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. He had rebuked Trump’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials of election interference.

In addition, some senators may see little benefit in stalling Ratcliffe’s nomination. Trump has already installed Ric Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, as interim director. Democrats portrayed him as a fierce Trump booster.

“An acting DNI with no experience in intelligence but with plenty of political loyalty to the president has been appointed to oversee America’s intelligence enterprise,” Warner said. Addressing Ratcliffe, the Virginia senator said, “Some have suggested that your main qualification for confirmation to this post is that you are not Ambassador Grenell. But frankly, that is not enough.”

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