Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) blocked the Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, John Ratcliffe, on Tuesday evening, infuriating Republicans who say Democrats are playing political games and threatening national security.
Ratcliffe’s nomination was supported in a bipartisan 14-3 vote out of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Monday. Yet Murphy blocked Republicans from confirming it on the Senate floor on Tuesday, arguing Democrats still had “serious concerns” about Ratcliffe.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) blasted Murphy for blocking Ratcliffe, who was previously confirmed by the Senate as Trump’s director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term. Cotton said:
The only vote we got yesterday was Senator Rubio. Now we’re not going to have a vote today, and apparently we’re not going to have a vote tomorrow, which means I hope nobody is making any plans for the weekend or the evenings, because we’re going to get these nominees confirmed, starting with Mr. Ratcliffe and then moving on to Mr. Hegseth and moving on to [Ms.] Noem, the easy way, or the hard way.
“We tried to cooperate with the Democrats. The cooperation has not been forthcoming, so I guess it’s going to be the hard way, starting on Thursday,” he added.
Murphy blocked an attempt by Cotton to hold a vote on Ratcliffe and said he intended to force two days of debate on Ratcliffe.
“There are serious concerns that many of us have about John [Ratcliffe’s] ability to distance himself from the political interests of President Trump and his work as CIA director during his short eight months as DNI,” Murphy said, claiming that the former DNI “in 2020 he repeatedly politicized intelligence in a way that does raise for many of us real questions about whether he’s going to spin highly sensitive intelligence his agency will gather for political purposes.”
Cotton hit back, saying, “What this is really about is trying to drag out all of these nominations to play procedural games, as we’re about to with Pete Hegseth’s nomination, to try to deny President Trump his cabinet in a prompt and timely fashion, just like the Democrats did in 2017.”
He warned Democrats that they would have to work through the weekend to get him confirmed.
“But as I said, don’t make plans for the weekend. Don’t have any dinner dates scheduled, starting on Thursday night, because we’re going to get these nominees done the easy, collegial way, or, apparently, the hard way.”
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