Russia probe Ratcliffe has staunchly supported Trump's criticism of the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, in particular the origins of the investigation, contending "it does appear that there were crimes committed during the Obama administration." Ratcliffe has stated that he has "seen no evidence" that Russian interference in the 2016 election helped get Trump elected. He has described court-approved surveillance of the Trump campaign as spying. He has claimed without evidence that the Russia probe may have been tainted by a criminal conspiracy. Days before he was announced as Trump's choice to be Director of National Intelligence, Ratcliffe drew headlines for his questioning of Robert Mueller during Mueller's congressional testimony. Ratcliffe criticized Mueller for describing instances of obstruction of justice in his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Ratcliffe claimed that Mueller went beyond the rules for special counsels, by covering instances of potential obstruction when the report did not charge any crimes. The Associated Press and PolitiFact found Ratcliffe's claim false, noting that special prosecutors are required by federal regulations to explain decisions not to prosecute. Neal Katyal, who wrote the special counsel regulations in 1999, called Ratcliffe "dead wrong." Ratcliffe also falsely claimed that the Steele dossier, which he described as a "fake, phony dossier", was the trigger that started the Trump-Russia probe. The House Republican intelligence committee's own memo about the Russia probe had said that it was information about George Papadopoulos that set off an investigation by the FBI in July 2016. Ratcliffe also asserted that Democrats "accused Donald Trump of a crime and then tried to reverse engineer a process to justify that accusation." Trump was reportedly impressed by Ratcliffe's aggressive questioning of Mueller, which some sources described as Ratcliffe's "audition" to be named DNI. Shortly before Trump announced he would be nominated as DNI, Ratcliffe asserted the Obama administration had committed a felony by leaking classified transcripts of 2016 phone calls between Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to The Washington Post. The gist of the conversations were conveyed to Post reporters, but not the transcripts themselves. He also asserted, "The Mueller report and its conclusions weren’t from Robert Mueller. They were written by what a lot of people believe was Hillary Clinton’s de facto legal team, people that had supported her, even represented some of her aides." Three days after becoming DNI in May 2020,