NEW: Top Trump Nominee Could Be ‘Day One’ Confirmation, Veteran Reporter Says

After weeks of watching as his top nominees were cast in doubt, President-elect Donald Trump may now see at least one of his most important aides confirmed on his first day in office, according to a veteran Washington, D.C. journalist who has been trawling the halls of the Capitol building and speaking with U.S. Senate sources in recent days. Jake Sherman, founder of Punchbowl News, reported Wednesday morning that the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to take up the nomination of John Ratcliffe for director of the Central Intelligence Agency five days before President-elect Trump is sworn into office at noon on January 20th.

Republicans took control of the Senate on January 3rd following the swearing-in of 53 caucus members, and conservative Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) took the reins from Democratic former chair Mark Warner (D-VA). According to Sherman, under Cotton’s command, Ratcliffe – the former Director of National Intelligence for Trump – should have no problem sailing through the hearing. Ratcliffe “could theoretically be a Day One confirmation,” Sherman added.

Both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have emphasized the importance of allowing Trump to have a national security team in place upon taking office, another sign that Ratcliffe may not be the only security nominee to be considered expeditiously. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s controversial nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Defense, has recently appeared to be on a smooth path, if not a glide, to confirmation. On Sunday, CBS News reported that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told President-elect Donald Trump he believes Hegseth will have the 51 or more votes necessary to be confirmed in the upper chamber, a remarkable turnaround for the nominee from weeks earlier. A spokesman for the Republican senator did not confirm the news, telling the outlet instead, “Two things we don’t discuss publicly: Whip counts and private conversations with the president.” Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker seemed to confirm the news when he told CBS that Hegseth’s confirmation hearing is expected to occur on January 14th, giving him less than a week to prepare.

NEWS — SENATE INTEL is holding @JohnRatcliffe's confirmation hearing JAN. 15. A week from today.

RATCLIFFE could theoretically be a Day One confirmation.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 8, 2025

Ratcliffe, 59, served as President-elect Trump’s final director of national security from 2020 to 2021, a fraught time in which he presided over the January 6th, 2021, breach at the Capitol and shouldered some of the blame for the federal government’s failure to prepare for unruly participants in the crowd that day. His time in the upper echelon of the U.S. intelligence community has been defined by debates among Republican senators as to whether Ratcliffe “politicizes” intelligence through disclosures and leaks, though during his 2020 confirmation hearings, other Senate members introduced “obvious evidence that Ratcliffe isn’t playing politics” as the DNI. Since leaving office, he has consulted for the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. Prior to his time in the Trump administration, Ratcliffe served as an antiterrorism official in the George W. Bush administration and later became the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. He served in the U.S. House from 2015 up until he was first tapped by Trump.

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