President Trump’s nominee to become the director of national intelligence vowed to protect whistleblowers after Sen. Dianne Feinstein confronted him with his past criticism of the Ukraine whistleblower, whose complaint sparked last year’s impeachment inquiry.
Ratcliffe emerged as a fierce defender of the president during the impeachment proceedings, arguing that Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine did not constitute an impeachable offense.
Feinstein, a California Democrat, recalled that during the impeachment saga, Ratcliffe questioned the credibility of the whistleblower, who is a member of the intelligence community.
“Do you believe that your past remarks concerning the Ukraine whistleblower will discourage [intelligence community] whistleblowers from exercising their rights, consistent with the law, to make protected disclosures?” Feinstein asked Ratcliffe during his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday.
“I want to make it very clear, if confirmed as DNI, every whistleblower, past, present, and future, will enjoy every protection under the law. I don’t want to relitigate old issues of what happened during the impeachment inquiry. My issue was not with the whistleblower. My issue was with what I perceived as a lack of due process in the House process,” Ratcliffe responded.
“Every whistleblower can expect full protection under the law. Whistleblowers are so important,” he added.
Feinstein also pressed Ratcliffe on whether he believed the intelligence community inspector general was improperly fired by Trump.
Trump fired Michael Atkinson, whom he appointed in 2018, following his acquittal in the Senate. Atkinson deemed the allegations in the whistleblower complaint to be credible and informed Congress of the matter.
“I will tell you that my dealings with Inspector General Atkinson, I had no issues. I think he did what he thought was right. I think he did think that he was following the law. The flip side to that is that the legal opinion within the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] from the general counsel and from the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, my reading of it is that their determination was that he may have exceeded his authority because the investigation involved issues that were not intelligence activities or intelligence community employees,” Ratcliffe said. “That’s a legal question that I don’t know the answer to.”
