President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced his choice of John Ratcliffe to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Ratcliffe, a former congressman from Texas, was director of national intelligence in Trump's first term.

“I look forward to John being the first person ever to hold our nation’s top two intelligence officers,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday evening. “He will be a courageous fighter for the constitutional rights of all Americans, while ensuring the highest levels of national security and peace through strength.”

Ratcliffe, who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 4th District from 2015 to 2020, was a controversial choice for director of national intelligence in Trump's first term — so much so that the first attempt to install him in 2019 failed.

Ratcliffe was also a federal prosecutor in Texas, and boasted on his website that he had “put terrorists in prison.” No US media outlet has been able to verify any evidence that he ever prosecuted terrorism cases. He also misrepresented his role in a “terrorist financing case” between the US and the Holy Land Foundation (a Palestinian charity), NBC News previously reported.

Following those stories, Trump announced last term that Ratcliffe had removed himself from consideration for the position of Director of National Intelligence.

Trump nominated Ratcliffe again in 2020, and the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Congressional aides say Ratcliffe is unlikely to face much difficulty in being confirmed for the CIA job in another Republican-controlled Senate.

Former intelligence officers who have worked with Ratcliffe say he is a relatively constructive figure compared with some of Trump’s other potential appointees who are more hostile to the spy agencies. But it is unclear whether Ratcliffe is willing to push back against proposals from the Trump team that observers say are seeking to politicize the CIA.

As a member of the House, Ratcliffe gained White House attention for his sharp criticism of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, suggesting that FBI and intelligence officials showed political bias and may have committed crimes.

In his 2020 confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ratcliffe tried to distance himself from Trump's repeated allegations about how a "deep state" of federal officials within intelligence agencies was conspiring to undermine him.

When asked if he believed there was a “deep state” within the intelligence community, Ratcliffe hinted that he did, saying, “I don’t know what it is.”

Ratcliffe is expected to carry out Trump’s agenda; Trump has vowed to root out what he calls “rogue” civil servants across the federal government. He has focused his ire on the intelligence agencies in particular, claiming they are seeking to undermine him.

Trump supporters have called for the removal of security clearances for former senior intelligence officials who speak to the media without permission from intelligence agency leadership.

Ratcliffe spoke out in favor of Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan. As director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe appeared to do his best to help Trump politically, but he reportedly backed off after the election when Trump and his aides sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In September 2020, Ratcliffe declassified intelligence about an alleged Russian assessment that others have described as unreliable or potentially disinformation, in which the Russians alleged that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally approved an effort to “soil U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump by linking him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

At the “disclosure” stage of the investigation, Ratcliffe said the U.S. intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.” The move drew sharp criticism from Democrats. But some saw Ratcliffe in a more positive light when former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson testified in a video testimony during the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that Ratcliffe had warned White House staffers about trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“I understood that Director Ratcliffe didn’t want to do much in the post-election period,” Hutchinson testified. “Director Ratcliffe felt that this was not something the White House should be pursuing.”

Former intelligence officials and Democratic lawmakers worry that Trump’s obsession with political loyalty and rooting out anti-democratic federal bureaucrats is hurting the spy agencies’ work.

At Ratcliffe’s confirmation hearing in 2020, Maine Sen. Angus King warned of an “ongoing struggle” with intelligence agencies trying to provide presidents with information that fits their political agendas.