WATCH: Trump’s CIA Pick Calls Out Adam Schiff Mid-Hearing

An otherwise benign U.S. Senate hearing turned frosty after President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the CIA singled out Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) for scheming to torpedo the first Trump administration with a dossier of misinformation.

John Ratcliffe, the no-nonsense intelligence officer who advised President Trump in 2020, sat before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday as he made his case for why its members should bring his nomination to the floor of the Senate. He is among the most prominent national security advisors that Republicans hope to confirm by the time Trump is sworn in on January 20th.

“We’re not where we’re supposed to be,” Ratcliffe said in his opening remarks. He reminded listeners that Schiff abused his power when he led a coalition of 51 former intelligence officers who penned an open letter dismissing Hunter Biden’s laptop as a “product of Russian disinformation.”

“In 2020, when a chairman of an intel committee misrepresented that a laptop owned by Biden’s son was somehow a Russian intel operation, and 51 former intelligence operators used the imprimatur of [intelligence community] authority to go along with that, I stood in the breach. I stood alone and told the American people the truth about that,” said the CIA nominee.

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Ratcliffe stated, “I think my record in terms of speaking truth to power and defending the intelligence community and its good work is very clear.”

Schiff, who was elected to the Senate in November after decades in the House, became a central figure in the push to throw cold water on the flames of Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal. He and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were found to have organized a letter from the 51 intelligence officials denying the veracity of the laptop after it was located in a repair shop by Rudy Giuliani.

Despite Trump’s loss in 2020, Republicans took control of the House and used the investigatory powers of various committees to obtain further information about the laptop and Democrats’ downplaying of its significance. An investigation by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) produced records and compelled testimony by figures like former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell, who implicated Blinken, former Obama advisor Leon Panetta, and other signatories.

Schiff and Ratcliffe have sparred in the past. In 2020, a spokesman for the Democrat said Ratcliffe was “purposefully misrepresenting” his characterization of the laptop.

The repairman who owned the store where Hunter Biden’s laptop was left and eventually forgotten by him later sued Schiff, alleging defamation after he called the laptop a “smear” by the “Kremlin.” A federal judge tossed the suit in 2023, according to the Washington Examiner.

This time around, Schiff won’t have as much power to stymie President-elect Trump’s agenda, at least for the first two years. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and a respectable one in the Senate, the latter being expected to swiftly approve most or all of Trump’s nominees as soon as next week.