The day before President Donald Trump nominated him to fill the position of director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, appeared on the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to dismiss the validity of investigations regarding the president’s actions towards Russia and Ukraine. He also baselessly accused Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of having executed a “quid pro quo” with regard to the firing of Ukraine’s corruption-coddling former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. The panel on which Ratcliffe appeared was titled “The Coup: Impeachment—Hyped Slimes and Nancy’s Schemer.” Charlie Hurt of The Washington Times also joined the panel. The identity of “Nancy’s Schemer” was never explicitly revealed. Asked by moderator Vince Coglianese of The Daily Caller whether he thought the Democrats had “learned their lesson” from their failure to remove Trump from office via ​the impeachment​ process​ or would instead “double down” on investigating Trump, Ratcliffe said he expected the Democrats to “double down.”

“And they haven’t learned a lesson,” Ratcliffe said of the Democrats, “despite the fact that throughout this process … whether it’s the Russia hoax or the Ukraine hoax—in every instance, the president’s been right. The president’s been the one that’s been telling the truth with respect to what’s happening.” https://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/Ratcliffe-1-1.mp4 Ratcliffe also took aim at the intelligence community he has been nominated to lead, saying that Trump was correct to complain of the actions of the FBI and the Department of Justice regarding surveillance that revealed contacts between the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian Federation government. “President Trump was right when the law enforcement community and the intelligence community didn’t get it right on all of those respects,” Ratcliffe said. An investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general found errors and a falsification in the FBI’s renewal applications for surveillance of Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign, but concluded that the FBI was not politically biased against Trump in its investigation of Russia’s interference in the campaign. But that’s not the way Ratcliffe sees it. The surveillance, he said, “was initiated in a Democratic administration with Democratic officials using foreign intelligence surveillance tools for political gain.” In the past, Ratcliffe has called for the prosecution of whomever leaked to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius ​the fact of​ former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s​ December 2016 convers​ations​ with Sergey Kislyak, who was then Russia’s ambassador to the United States​. According to leaders of the U.S. intelligence community, Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in ​an effort to harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Later, Flynn was found to have discussed with Kislyak—before Trump’s inauguration—the potential lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama administration in retaliation for the election interference. Several of those calls took place the very day on which President Barack Obama imposed the sanctions. Flynn was charged with lying under oath to the FBI, and his case is currently before a federal court in Washington, D.C. (Flynn is currently attempting to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming to have received bad advice from his lawyers.) https://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/Ratcliffe-2.mp4 During the CPAC panel discussion, Ratcliffe also repeated the debunked claim that Biden demanded the firing of Ukraine prosecutor Shokin because the prosecutor was investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm on whose board Hunter Biden, the Democrat’s son, sat. In fact, then-Vice President Biden called for Shokin’s 2016 ouster in concert with leaders of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund because he was doing little to address the country’s rampant corruption problem, and seemed loath to prosecute members of the party once led by ​[[the Russia-leaning former ​Ukrainian president,​]] Viktor Yanukovich, the Russia-leaning former ​Ukrainian president who fled to Moscow during an anti-corruption popular uprising. In fact, Shokin was also dragging his feet on the Burisma investigation, which commenced before Hunter Biden joined the board. Shokin also declined to prosecute apparent corruption in his own ranks. According to The New York Times:

In one high-profile example, known in Ukraine as the case of the “diamond prosecutors,” troves of diamonds, cash and other valuables were found in the homes of two of Mr. Shokin’s subordinates, suggesting that they had been taking bribes. But the case became bogged down, with no reasons given. When a department in Mr. Shokin’s office tried to bring it to trial, the prosecutors were fired or resigned. The perpetrators seemed destined to get off with claims that the stones were not worth very much.