Donald Trump has confirmed the former Indiana senator Dan Coats as his nominee to be director of national intelligence, promising “ceaseless vigilance against those who seek to do us harm”.

The nomination, which was reported widely this week, came a day after Trump met agency chiefs including current director of national intelligence James Clapper to discuss the conclusion that Russia interfered in the US election in favour of the Republican candidate.

The agencies released a heavily redacted report detailing their conclusions, in which they said Russian president Vladimir Putin “ordered” the operation to help get Trump elected.

Senior congressional Democrats seized on the report to demand further bipartisan investigation and condemn Trump’s response.

The president-elect did not endorse the agencies’ findings and complained to the New York Times prior to the meeting of a “political witch-hunt” against him.

On Saturday, true to unrepentant form, Trump used Twitter to issue comment.



“Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results,” he wrote. “Voting machines not touched!

“Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!”

Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the electoral college, by 304 votes to 227. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots.



During the campaign Trump alleged, without evidence and to refutation by electoral experts, vast voter fraud in favour of the Democrat. Since the election, he has repeated such charges and said that if he had wanted to win the popular vote he would have campaigned harder in the larger states.

Trump has also consistently spoken favourably of Putin and urged a closer relationship with Russia.

On Saturday, he added: “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one.

“When I am president, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!”

It had been reported that Trump could scrap or limit the powers of the director of national intelligence. Amid such reports, the NSA director, Adm Mike Rogers, told a Senate committee this week staff might “walk” if they perceived a lack of support from the White House.



In a statement regarding Coats, Trump said: “[Coats] will provide unwavering leadership that the entire intelligence community can respect, and will spearhead my administration’s ceaseless vigilance against those who seek to do us harm.”



Coats said: “A robust and responsible intelligence infrastructure is essential to our homeland security, and if confirmed I will ensure our national security decision-makers have every piece of information they need to protect the American people from the threats facing our nation.”

Coats is a former US representative and ambassador to Germany who retired from the Senate this year. Like the influential vice-president elect, Mike Pence, he is a strong social conservative from Indiana.

Pence, a former US representative, is much more closely tied to congressional Republicans than Trump and will operate offices on Capitol Hill.

Coats has held views on intelligence and foreign policy that do not tally with those expressed by Trump and close advisers such as national security pick Michael Flynn.

In a November 2015 Senate speech, for example, Coats said the fight against Islamic State militants should include “Islamists who believe that their faith and their culture is being perverted brutally by Isis”.

He does, however, align with the president-elect on keeping open the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the subject of intense international pressure over alleged human rights abuses and which the Obama administration has sought to close.

In 2016, Coats called Guantánamo “a valuable tool in our counter-terrorism efforts”.

In 2015, Coats voted against the USA Freedom Act, which curtailed mass domestic surveillance by US agencies as revealed by the leak of National Security Agency files by Edward Snowden.