In the extraordinary public dispute between Donald Trump and the CIA, one man finds himself in a particularly tricky position: the president-elect’s nominee to lead the agency, Rep. Mike Pompeo.

The tea party Republican from Kansas, who is expected to win Senate confirmation, will have to repair a relationship between Trump and the CIA that has been battered by the president-elect’s repeated disparagement of the agency’s capabilities and competence.

“I think that we’ve never quite seen a moment like this in agency history where an incoming president was so openly critical and questioning of the agency’s integrity,” said Dennis Wilder, a former senior CIA official who retired this year. “I think Pompeo’s on a bit of a hot seat going into this job because he’s going to have to bridge both sides of this, and he’s going to have to convince President Trump that agency reporting and analysis is both valuable and has integrity to it.”

During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly dismissed the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic Party institutions.

The already testy relationship then took a nosedive following a Washington Post report last week of a CIA assessment that Russian-orchestrated hacking during the U.S. elections aimed to help Trump win.