Trump Picks Dan Coats as National Intelligence Director

President-elect Donald Trump has named former Sen. Dan Coats to serve as the director of national intelligence. “Dan has clearly demonstrated the deep subject matter expertise and sound judgment required to lead our intelligence community,” Trump said in a statement Saturday. Reports had circulated on Friday that Coats would be nominated for the job, but Trump made it official on Saturday. He said Coats would be the perfect man to “provide unwavering leadership that the entire intelligence community can respect” and “spearhead my administration’s ceaseless vigilance against those who seek to do us harm.” The Indiana senator and former U.S. ambassador to Germany would lead 16 different intelligence agencies if confirmed to the post. Coats, who was banned from Russia in 2014 over his support for sanctions against the country, promised to “ensure our national security decision-makers have every piece of information they need to protect the American people from the threats facing our nation” in a statement on his nomination.