John Ratcliffe, a contributor to Project 2025’s over 900-page Mandate for Leadership, has been chosen as Trump’s Director of the CIA, a Senate-confirmed position.

Ratcliffe is a partisan loyalist who rose to fame after defending Trump during congressional hearings, including during the 2019 impeachment.

He was nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in 2019, but Ratcliffe had to retract his candidacy over allegations he had padded his resume. He claimed he had arrested over 300 undocumented immigrants in a single day, which was not true. He also claimed he had successfully prosecuted terrorists that sent money to Hamas. Not only was he not involved in that case, his office refused to name any other cases he had successfully prosecuted.

Even so, Ratcliffe became the DNI in 2020. He was in charge of the intelligence community as Trump lied about foreign election interference stealing the election, and warned that Trump’s lies were going to cause problems.

Apparently disregarding his own concerns about potential violence on January 6, several intelligence agencies ailed to act on credible threats and warnings of violence in the lead up to January 6. Those failures resulted in an attempted insurrection that wounded 140 officers and caused several deaths. It is the only time in U.S. history where 

Ratcliffe’s experience as DNI should be considered a mark against him, not in favor. He was in charge of intelligence when the U.S. Capitol was violently seized for the first time in over 200 years. If one agency had failed, it may have been their fault; when several fail, the responsibility lands on the Director of National Intelligence.