Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to address some concerns that my Republican colleagues have raised about my decision to insist on a 1- day debate on the nomination of John Ratcliffe to be the Director of the CIA. Plain and simple, I think we should take some time--1 day--to consider one of the most important, sensitive national security posts in this new administration. I do not think it makes sense to ram through Mr. Ratcliffe's nomination with only 120 minutes of debate, as was the suggestion last night. Many people here have raised serious concerns about his qualifications. For instance, during his short tenure as Director of National Intelligence, Mr. Ratcliffe showed a very troubling propensity to play politics with sensitive intelligence. Most notoriously, just 1 month before the 2020 election, on the day of the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Mr. Ratcliffe chose to declassify a cherry-picked CIA memo from 4 years earlier that outlined Russian claims that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to tie Trump to Russia's hack of the DNC so that Trump could use that in the debate. These were unverified Russian intelligence claims. Mr. Ratcliffe's decision went against explicit warnings by CIA personnel that its release would put in jeopardy CIA sources, methods, and personnel, but he did it anyway on the day of the debate, a month before the election, because its release would help Donald Trump's reelection campaign.…”