A journalist admonished House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff for having no evidence to support his claim that the Justice Department's criminal inquiry into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation has been "tainted" by President Trump's political agenda.

Last week, it was revealed that U.S. Attorney John Durham's administrative review, examining the behavior of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials during the 2016 election, had transitioned from an administrative review to a criminal investigation.

"This is tainted because of the motivation, which is a political one, to serve the president’s political interests," Schiff said in an interview Sunday.

Martha Raddatz, host of ABC News's This Week, noted, "You have no evidence of that yet whatsoever, however."

In response, the congressman said, "The evidence, I think, is pretty clear," but then offered only the metaphor of connecting the dots.

"The president has been calling for the Justice Department to investigate [former FBI Director James] Comey, to investigate [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, to investigate anyone who stood in his way, and now what is Bill Barr doing? He’s doing an investigation of — a criminal investigation of some of the people responsible for this probe, so you can, I think, connect one dot to another," he said.

Arguing that the people who ran the Russia investigation acted appropriately, Schiff said this shows Attorney General William Barr, who is overseeing Durham's inquiry, has "weaponized" the Justice Department to go after the president's enemies. Raddatz noted that Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut, is "very well-respected" and asked the California Democrat why not let the investigation run its course.

Schiff reasoned that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, whose work he has also called "tainted," already has a report coming out soon on possible abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "There’s been no public explanation for why this needs to be a criminal probe," Schiff said.

Republicans celebrated the news that Durham's review had become a criminal investigation, as they believe officials from the Obama administration improperly targeted Trump and his campaign.

One of Schiff's colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, explained last week why he believes the Horowitz report, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks, is critical to Durham's work.

"I think that these two things are related. That the work done by Michael Horowitz could result in criminal referrals, even though the report hasn’t been released. The referrals could already have been made," Ratcliffe said Friday on Fox News.

Schiff has taken the lead in the impeachment proceedings against Trump. Investigators are looking into whether the president abused his power by pressuring a foreign government to conduct investigations that would be politically advantageous to him.

Schiff has become a controversial opponent of the president. Earlier this year, he was challenged for repeatedly saying there was "collusion in plain sight" between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia as special counsel Robert Mueller conducted his Russia investigation, which did not establish any criminal conspiracy.

In recent weeks, Republicans have sought to censure Schiff because of his “parody” reading of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a hearing last month. Trump has called Schiff a "corrupt politician."