← Chronicle · Confirmation · January 23, 2025

John Ratcliffe Confirmed as CIA Director, 74–25

Senate vote: 74–25

John Ratcliffe was confirmed by the Senate as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on January 23, 2025, by a vote of 74–25, and was sworn in the same day — one of the earliest confirmations of the second Trump administration, two days after Marco Rubio’s at State.

The mission that started here is the intelligence portfolio this chronicle tracks: the CIA directorship at the center of the administration’s intelligence community, a post Ratcliffe holds as one of the administration’s quieter principals, working principally through agency channels rather than public ones.

Sources: Senate confirmation record, January 23, 2025 (vote, date, and same-day swearing-in banked in this site’s research cluster C); Central Intelligence Agency.