John Ratcliffe is the 'least-qualified person ever nominated' for national intelligence director, officials say

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) doesn't exactly have a fan club lining up to support him.

President Trump on Sunday announced that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats would be stepping down soon, and that Ratcliffe would be nominated to take his place. Yet even Senate Republicans wouldn't give Ratcliffe a confident endorsement after the announcement, while current and former intelligence officials are calling him "the least-qualified person ever nominated to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies," The Washington Post reports.

Ratcliffe was in consideration for the DNI role as Trump reportedly weighed firing Coats, who he'd been at public odds with in the past. When that decision became final, though, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-N.C.) merely said the committee "will work to move [Ratcliffe's nomination] swiftly through regular order." Meanwhile, two former high-ranking intelligence officials authored a Post op-ed saying Ratcliffe would have "by far the least experience in foreign policy and intelligence of any DNI in two decades," and took issue with his "political positions on important national security issues."

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Meanwhile, an ABC News report found that Ratcliffe is seemingly trying to inflate his sparse national intelligence resume. Ratcliffe's House website and campaign literature both have claimed that he was a prosecutor in a case involving the funding of terrorist groups, but ABC News says it "could find no public court records that connect Ratcliffe to either of the two trials for the case."

Ratcliffe's spokesperson told ABC News "it would not be in accordance with Department of Justice policies to make further details public" about the cases, but said DOJ records would confirm his role. Read more at ABC News.