Another ignorant Trump toady for a very important post

Trump likes him because he made an ass of himself on Trump's behalf during the impeachment hearings.

“As a U.S. Attorney, I arrested over 300 illegal immigrants on a single day,” Rat­cliffe (R-Tex.) says on his congressional website.

[...]

Ratcliffe played a supporting role in the 2008 sweep, which involved U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states and was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, according to a Justice Department news release. The effort targeted workers at poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride who were suspected of using stolen Social Security numbers.

Only 45 workers were charged by prosecutors in Ratcliffe’s office, court documents show. Six of those cases were dismissed, two of them because the suspects turned out to be American citizens. One of those citizens, a 19-year-old woman, was awakened in her home and hauled away by immigration agents, the woman said in an interview.

[...]

A third was a legal resident worker.

  WaPo

Three hundred, forty-five, same difference.

Ratcliffe has made the immigration roundup of poultry workers, code named Operation Plymouth Rock, a defining example of his conservative bona fides.

[...]

Two people involved in the planning or execution of the enforcement effort said they could not recall Ratcliffe playing a central role.

A.J. Irwin, a former immigration investigator who was involved in the early planning stages before retiring, said in an interview that the operation was a costly failure.

[...]

Irwin said he raised questions about its goals and methods during planning sessions in 2007. Irwin said he questioned why they were devoting so many resources to a case he thought would net only low-level offenders.

[...]

“At the end of the day, it did not deliver,” Irwin said. “It was the biggest waste of money and hype.”

[...]

He dismissed Ratcliffe’s claim of having arrested 300 immigrants in the country illegally, in part because ICE agents and U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states were involved. Also, he said, federal prosecutors do not arrest suspects.

[...]

Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman in ICE’s El Paso office who also participated in the operation, questioned Ratcliffe’s characterization of his role in the arrests. “No, that doesn’t sound factual. That sounds incorrect,” she told The Washington Post.

Zamarripa said she does not recall Ratcliffe being involved. “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” she said.

[...]

“Operation Plymouth Rock led to the successful prosecution of hundreds of illegal aliens,” the campaign brochure said.

[...]

Ratcliffe’s campaign literature later claimed that “as a result of John’s efforts” Pilgrim’s Pride paid a $4.5 million “criminal penalty.” The agreement to pay the money was not struck until December 2009, a year after Ratcliffe left the prosecutor’s office. The company did not admit wrongdoing and the government brought no civil or criminal charges against it.

[...]

Ratcliffe has dialed back his earlier claims that he had won convictions in a high-profile terrorism case as a federal prosecutor. His planned nomination has drawn opposition from Senate Democrats and tepid support from key Republicans.

Some current and former intelligence officials have said Ratcliffe is the least-qualified person ever nominated to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies.

Only because Trump's acting DNI isn't being nominated.

Ratcliffe has been a staunch defender of the president and has alleged anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Trump tweeted out his plan to nominate Ratcliffe several days after the lawmaker attacked former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III during a hearing.

His resumé.

In 2004, he was hired as an assistant federal prosecutor in the sprawling Eastern District of Texas and was named chief of anti-terrorism in the office, despite an admitted lack of experience.

“My background isn’t in law enforcement and I don’t have any real specialized training,” he said in an interview with the Dallas Morning News in early 2005.

But, hey. It's Texas, right?

The same year he became a prosecutor, Ratcliffe was elected mayor of Heath, an unpaid post he would hold for eight years while working for the Justice Department. In his run later for the House, Ratcliffe cited his leadership of Heath — a wealthy lakeside community of 8,000 that has a yacht club and a private golf course — as an example of his government service and fiscal acumen.

[...]

In 2016, seeking reelection, he claimed a central role in a major federal terrorism case. “There are individuals that currently sit in prison because I prosecuted them for funneling money to terrorist groups,” he is quoted as saying in campaign literature.

Stephens, Ratcliffe’s spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about which cases Ratcliffe was referring to. But the same news release refers to a high-profile case from that time. “In 2008, Ratcliffe served by special appointment as the prosecutor in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, one of the nation’s largest terrorism financing cases,” it says.

Stephens acknowledged this week that Ratcliffe’s assignment was not to prosecute the case but rather “to investigate issues related to” why an initial prosecution of Holy Land Foundation resulted in a mistrial.

The only good thing is if he's confirmed, it gets him out of Congress.  And with any luck, he'll only serve a year before Trump is unelected.

UPDATE:

“Intelligence should never be guided by partisanship or politics. Unfortunately, Congressman Ratcliffe has shown an unacceptable embrace of conspiracy theories and a clear disrespect and distrust of our law enforcement and intelligence patriots that disqualify him from leading America’s intelligence community,” [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi said in a statement.

[...]

“Last summer, this nomination was withdrawn after revelations about Congressman Ratcliffe’s clear lack of qualifications and many misleading statements about his resumé,” Pelosi added. “The President is now ignoring these many serious outstanding concerns and letting politics, not patriotism, guide our national security.”

[...]

[Ratcliffe] was one of the president’s fiercest defenders during former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and the House impeachment hearings in the fall.

[...]

Republican members of the committee often yielded their time to Ratcliffe and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who questioned the diplomats' political motivations and furthered conspiracy theories, such as suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

  The Hill