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."