Hours before he was officially announced as President Donald Trump’s pick for director of National Intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) (shown above left) publicly accused members of the Obama administration of breaking the law.

Democrats “accused Donald Trump of a crime, and then they try and reverse-engineer a process to justify that accusation,” he told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

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Ratcliffe discussed his particularly scathing questioning of former special counsel Robert Mueller, claiming the Democrats have long denied Trump a presumption of innocence.

Related: 25 Most Incredible Reactions to Mueller’s Appearance on Capitol Hill

He promptly accused the administration under Barack Obama of having committed crimes — though, unlike the Democrats, he declined to harpoon the presumption of innocence by citing specifics.

“I’m not going to accuse any specific person of any specific crime. I just want there to be a fair process to get there,” Ratcliffe stated. “What I do know, as a former federal prosecutor, is that it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration.”

Shortly thereafter, President Trump announced Ratcliffe as his nomination to replace Dan Coats as head of National Intelligence.

If confirmed by the Senate, Ratcliffe would become the sixth person to serve as the leader of the intelligence community.

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Ratcliffe discussed areas of the Russia inquiry that Mueller claimed were not within his boundaries to investigate.

Though he sought to identify collusion between Russia and an American campaign, the special counsel did not feel it relevant to analyze items such as the Steele dossier and the Hillary Clinton campaign’s role, James Comey’s leaks, Fusion GPS — or Bruce and Nellie Ohr.

The Trump nominee would like to see the Justice Department investigate.

“Now the things that Bob Mueller said he didn’t know about and his team clearly didn’t look at, those are things that would be fair for Bill Barr and the Department of Justice to look at,” Ratcliffe explained.

“We know that things happened in the Obama administration that haven’t been answered. There’s been no accountability for that yet.”

Ratcliffe also mentioned the leaking of classified phone transcripts involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“You talked earlier about Michael Flynn. His phone call with the Russian ambassador was a highly classified NSA intercept. Someone in the Obama administration leaked that call to The Washington Post. That’s a felony,” he said.

Sounding the alarm. In the past, Ratcliffe has accused the Obama administration of giving the Justice Department stand-down orders when it came to investigating Hillary.

He has also referenced the Obama administration’s use of FISA court warrants in its efforts to spy on members of the Trump campaign in 2016.

With this string of accusations, Ratcliffe has joined President Trump in saying it’s time to open up an “investigation of the investigators.”

This piece originally appeared in The Political Insider and is used by permission.

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