Politics

John Ratcliffe Interview Takes On New Significance After Trump Picks Him As Intelligence Chief

• Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe on Sunday urged investigations into potential wrongdoing by the Obama administration, including illegal media leaks related to the Russia probe. 
• Hours after the comment, President Donald Trump announced that he will nominate the Texas Republican to serve as director of national intelligence.
• “What I do know as a former federal prosecutor is it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration,” Ratcliffe said on Fox News. 

Hours before President Donald Trump tapped him Sunday as director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe urged investigations into potential wrongdoing during the Obama administration, including potentially illegal leaks to the media.

“What I do know as a former federal prosecutor is it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama Administration,” Ratcliffe told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo.

Trump announced later on Sunday that he was nominating Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats, who will leave the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Aug. 15.

Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney, will not have prosecutorial power as head of ODNI, which coordinates intelligence sharing among 17 federal agencies. But his comments suggest that ODNI would cooperate with any ongoing investigations.

Coats, a former Republican senator, has been seen as out of step with Trump on various aspects of the Russia issue. Ratcliffe has been one of Trump’s strongest defenders during the Russia probe and has urged investigations into the FBI’s applications for wiretaps on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Ratcliffe said Sunday that while he was “not going to accuse any specific person of any specific crime,” he listed three incidents that he believes should be investigated. (RELATED: Ratcliffe To Replace Dan Coats As Director Of National Intelligence)

He noted a leak of classified National Security Agency transcripts of a phone call that Michael Flynn had in 2016 with Russia’s ambassador to The Washington Post.

“That’s a felony,” Ratcliffe said of the leak.

WATCH:

[dc_video id=0]

Ratcliffe also noted discrepancies between congressional testimonies given by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee that he met Ohr, whose wife was a Fusion GPS contractor, after the 2016 election. But Ohr testified that he and Simpson met in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 22, 2016.

“One of them is not telling the truth,” said Ratcliffe. “We need a process to identify that.”

He then shifted to former FBI Director James Comey’s leak of memos of his conversations with Trump to the press.

“He admitted that he leaked his confidential conversations with the president to a reporter. Did that include classified information? We need a fair process to find out the answer to that,” Ratcliffe said.

Comey has testified that after he was fired as FBI director on May 9, 2017, he instructed a friend, Daniel Richman, to leak memos of his conversations with Trump to The New York Times.

Comey wrote nine memos following his interactions with Trump and gave several of the documents to Richman. He said he wanted the documents published in order to prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

Ratcliffe went on to say that he has confidence in several Justice Department inquiries into the origins of the Russia probe and surveillance activities against the Trump campaign.

“I trust, because Bill Barr has earned my trust already, and the trust of the American people, that there’ll be a fair processes with John Durham and with Michael Horowitz to get answers to that and provide accountability where it really belongs.”

Barr, the attorney general, testified on May 1 that the Justice Department is conducting “multiple” criminal leak investigations involving classified government information. Barr tapped Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to review the intelligence community’s actions regarding the Trump campaign.

Trump granted Barr the authority to declassify certain intelligence community documents and also directed the heads of intelligence community agencies to cooperate with the attorney general.

Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, is investigating the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.