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Trump says director of national intelligence is resigning

Trump says director of national intelligence is resigning | iNFOnews.ca
FILE - In this Wednesday, July 24, 2019, file photo, Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas., questions former special counsel Robert Mueller as he testifies before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference, on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that the nation’s top intelligence official would step aside on Aug. 15, and that he would nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe to the post, following a report Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is leaving his job next month. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

WASHINGTON – Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is leaving his job next month, ending a two-year tenure marked by President Donald Trump's clashes with intelligence officials.

Trump announced Coats' departure on Aug. 15 in a tweet Sunday that thanked Coats for his service. He said he will nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, to the post and that he will name an acting official in the coming days. Ratcliffe is a frequent Trump defender who fiercely questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller last week during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Coats often appeared out of step with Trump and disclosed to prosecutors how he was urged by the president to publicly deny any link between Russia and the Trump campaign. The frayed relationship reflected broader divisions between the president and the government's intelligence agencies.

Coats' public, and sometimes personal, disagreements with Trump over policy and intelligence included Russian election interference and North Korean nuclear capabilities. Trump had long been skeptical of the nation's intelligence community, which provoked his ire by concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the goal of getting him elected.

A former Republican senator from Indiana, Coats was appointed director of National Intelligence in March 2017, becoming the fifth person to hold the post since it was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to oversee and co-ordinate the nation's 17 intelligence agencies.

Coats had been among the last of the seasoned foreign policy hands brought to surround the president after his 2016 victory, of whom the president steadily grew tired as he gained more personal confidence in Oval Office, officials said. That roster included Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and later national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Coats developed a reputation inside the administration for sober presentations to the president of intelligence conclusions that occasionally contradicted Trump's policy aims.

His departure had been rumoured for months, and intelligence officials had been expecting him to leave before the 2020 presidential campaign season reached its peak.

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Marshall Jones

News is best when it's local, relevant, timely and interesting. That's our focus every day.

We are on the ground in Penticton, Vernon, Kelowna and Kamloops to bring you the stories that matter most.

Marshall may call West Kelowna home, but after 16 years in local news and 14 in the Okanagan, he knows better than to tell readers in other communities what is "news' to them. He relies on resident reporters to reflect their own community priorities and needs. As the newsroom leader, his job is making those reporters better, ensuring accuracy, fairness and meeting the highest standards of journalism.

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