On Monday's edition of CNN's "The Situation Room," former CIA official Philip Mudd outlined what the punditry is missing when they call the Ukraine scheme between President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani a "shadow diplomacy."
"Rudy Guiliani and federal prosecutors are looking into what he did," said anchor Wolf Blitzer. "We know he was engaged in the so-called shadow diplomacy without any security clearances ... What does that say to you?"
"I mean, there's a couple things, there's a legal thing and there's a policy thing," said Mudd. "Look, I think the Democrats have this wrong. This is not about shadow diplomacy, the president can do inappropriate things in diplomacy if he wants. This is about money. So the questions are going to be, did Rudy Guiliani have interactions with the Ukrainians, for example, on getting money for a campaign events? Not, did he go out to Ukraine and do things that the State Department doesn't like, So I think if I were Rudy Guiliani, I wouldn't care about the Democrats, I would care about the feds and the FBI looking at money."
"On the security clearance, just one quick comment," continued Mudd. "Mr. Guiliani, I'd have a question. If you need to understand what Russia is doing because you are the point person on Ukraine and you don't see any intercepted communications about the Russian military, you don't see any imagery, that is, satellite photography of what the Russians are doing, how the heck do you know what America understands about Russia? I think the security clearance thing isn't a problem in terms of the president going forward, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing."
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