Washington (CNN) Rep. Adam Schiff argued Wednesday that the Department of Justice "needs to re-examine" the Office of Legal Counsel's opinion that a sitting US president should not be indicted.

"I think the Justice Department needs to re-examine that OLC opinion, the Office of Legal Counsel opinion, that you cannot indict a sitting president under circumstances in which the failure to do so may mean that person escapes justice," Schiff said Wednesday in an interview on CNN's "Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."

Schiff, the likely incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN there should be an exception to the Office of Legal Counsel's opinion if a president leaves office and "can no longer be brought to justice."

"I don't think that the Justice Department ought to take the position -- and it's certainly not one that would be required in any way by the Constitution -- that a president merely by being in office can be above the law ... by waiting out the statute of limitations," Schiff told CNN.

That a sitting president cannot be indicted has been the position of the Office of Legal Counsel since the Nixon administration and was reaffirmed in the Clinton administration, but it has never been tested in court.

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