US Senate Confirms Trump’s CIA Pick, Clears Way for Hegseth Approval

The US Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly confirmed John Ratcliffe as the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In other hearings on the same day, two Republican senators voted “nay” on the first step of the confirmation of Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth. That was not enough to keep his nomination from going to a final vote.

Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both considered moderates in the American legislature’s upper house, said they had reservations about Hegseth’s history of alcohol abuse and the stories of his abusive treatment of women.

The former Fox News personality has been accused of drinking on the job (allegations an office waste basket filled with beer cans, etc.) and accusations of, but no criminal nor civil charges stemming from, sexual assault on a female guest in 2017 after a bacchanalian poolside session at a California hotel where Hegseth was delivering a speech. That latter case was settled out of court.

Hegseth’s former sister-in-law also provided written testimony to the Senate that he was an abusive husband. At the advice of her lawyer, Hegseth’s ex-wife did not corroborate her sister’s claims against the man who has been paying the ex-wife’s alimony.

In the hearings, several senators also remarked on the former junior military officer’s thin resume, saying that his brief military service and employment as a Fox News commentator did not qualify him to lead a department employing some 1.4 million US service members. He has never been elected to public office.

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Despite all of this, the Senate voted 51-49 in favor of advancing Hegseth’s nomination to a final vote, with all Democrats voting against. Hegseth’s opponents would have needed at least two more “nay”s to avoid a tie that would have been settled by Republican Vice President JD Vance, the constitutionally appointed President of the Senate.

Meanwhile, the upper house voted 74-25 on Thursday to approve the nomination of Ratcliffe, who by all accounts was much more highly qualified for the office. The former Texas representative served as the Director of National Intelligence from 2020-2021 during Trump’s first term in office.

While Ratcliffe’s political bias has been questioned by Congress before, especially in those DNI hearings after which he went on to use classified information to attack the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2020, Ratcliffe promised to the Senate this time around that the CIA under his leadership would “produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis, never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgment or infect our products.”