Author and former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy implicated former President Barack Obama in the spying on Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 election.

The former U.S. attorney and Fox News contributor spoke with Sean Hannity about the origins of the investigation of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election and the maneuvers against Trump that Obama had to be fully aware of.

(Video: Fox News)

The Fox News host questioned McCarthy on “Hannity” Tuesday about his belief that the Obama administration used the government’s law enforcement and intelligence apparatus against Trump.

“What I’m saying is not that the president sits there and directs that there be counter-intelligence investigations,” the National Review contributing editor responded.

“What I’m saying is that unlike criminal investigations, counter intelligence investigations are done for the president. The only reason to do them is to inform the president with the information he needs to protect the United States from foreign threats,” McCarthy explained.

“They’re not like criminal investigations in that regard. So in principle, the information from a counter intelligence investigation is for the president. And here we know at various junctures we have actual factual information that this investigation was well-known to President Obama,” he said.

“So, if he knew, and this is all happening, he had to know about it from the get-go. Doesn’t that also imply that he would have been updated on this if he’s the one that needs it for national security decision-making?” Hannity asked.

“If things were working properly the president should have been alerted about it and informed about it – it was a very important investigation,” McCarthy replied. “If they actually believed what they were telling the court, that it was a possibility that Donald Trump was actually a plant of the Kremlin, it would have been derelict on their part not to keep the president informed.”

Back in June, Trump took a shot at Obama in a tweet, quoting Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“Someone should call Obama up. The Obama Administration spied on a rival presidential campaign using Federal Agencies. I mean, that seems like a headline to me?” @TuckerCarlson It will all start coming out, and the Witch Hunt will end. Presidential Harassment! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2019

The president gave McCarthy a shout-out for his new book after the author appeared on a “Fox & Friends” segment last week.

Go out and get Andrew McCarthy’s new book, “Ball of Collusion.” “Supervision became the investigator, and when they pushed the envelope, there was nobody there to tell them NO. It goes right to the President (Obama). Plenty of information that Obama was informed & knew exactly… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2019

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham also spoke with Hannity on Tuesday, predicting the impending report from the Justice Department inspector general on alleged FISA abuse will be nothing short of “damning” for Obama and his officials.

“I think it’s going to be really damning and ugly and people did some really bad things that are dangerous for the country, but you’ll only find it on Fox,” the South Carolina Republican said, referring to the probability that the mainstream media would ignore the news. “You may find it a little bit in the paper.”

(Video: Fox News)

“Here’s what I predict: It’ll be ten percent of the coverage that the Mueller report got, and that’s a shame,” Graham added.

He noted his interest in finding out exactly when Obama knew about the use of a FISA warrant to spy on Trump’s then-campaign aide, Carter Page.

“It would be ugly and damning if you could prove that the document they used to get the warrant, without which there would be no warrant, was not verified until later, that they put no effort into verifying the document before they gave it to the court,” he said. “I want to declassify everything that we can declassify, so the story tells itself.”

“It’s not, ‘What did Obama know and when he know it?,'” Graham said. “It’s ‘Who told it?’ And, ‘What did he do when he was told?'”