Van Jones said Wednesday on his CNN show, "The Messy Truth," that President Donald Trump should give Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama's national security adviser, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Jones told Republicans that instead of attacking Rice for her reported role in allegedly unmasking Trump transition officials, whose communications were incidentally captured by U.S. intelligence, they should be thanking her for not going public with the classified information to hurt the president.

"She got very disturbing information, and she looked into it. And as best we can tell, she did her job inside the proper channels," Jones said. "For doing this, Donald Trump should give Susan Rice the Presidential Medal of Freedom, OK?"

Jones also criticized conservative media for its reporting on Rice.

Van Jones: "The right-wing media wants to burn Susan Rice at the stake for doing her job." #TheMessyTruth https://t.co/5BqkhhfBX5 — CNN (@CNN) April 6, 2017

There is so far no evidence that Rice's actions were illegal, but some Republicans have accused her behavior of being politically motivated. Rice has denied that accusation, saying she did nothing improper and the Obama administration did not use intelligence to hurt Trump.

Jones, a former Obama administration official himself, said Rice was just doing her job.

"Susan Rice was our national security adviser. To give good advice, you gotta ask good questions! Especially when fishy looking stuff lands on your desk, OK?" Jones said. "Now, finding out for yourself the names of sketchy people, doing possibly sketchy things is called unmasking, OK? Now that doesn't mean revealing it to the whole world–that would be illegal."

"It does mean revealing those names to yourself, at your desk, so you can do a better job advising the president. As best we can tell, that's all she did: her job," added Jones, a CNN commentator.

Jones continued to say Republicans were lucky that Rice did not act like FBI James Comey during the 2016 campaign.

"She could of [sic] called a press conference in the middle of the election, like James Comey did from the FBI, OK? She could of [sic] run around screaming bloody murder, ‘look what I found, look what I found.' She didn't do that," Jones said.