ratcliffe has been quoted stating that the steele dossier, which he described as a "fake, phony dossier", was the start of the russia probe. this was confirmed 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.