Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said today that reports detailing the involvement of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in the White House’s Ukraine policy were “deeply troubling.”
“What I see right now troubles me. I see a state of conflict between the foreign policy professionals and someone who says he’s acting on behalf of the president but frankly I don’t know if that is the case,” Rice said at a conference in Abu Dhabi. “This is just not a good thing. The world shouldn’t get confusing messages from the United States of America.”
Multiple witness have alleged in house testimony that Giuliani conducted his own investigative work without regard for the administration’s formal policy.
William Taylor, the former top American diplomat in Ukraine, whose testimony was released last week, asserted that Giuliani was actively undermining U.S. foreign policy.
“The irregular channel seemed to focus on specific issues, specific cases, rather than the regular channel’s focus on institution building,” Taylor said, according to the transcript. “So the irregular channel, I think under the influence of Mr. Giuliani, wanted to focus on one or two specific cases, irrespective of whether it helped solve the corruption problem, fight the corruption problem.”
Earlier today, news broke that Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani, will tell investigators that Giuliani attempted to leverage an official visit from Vice President Mike Pence to coax Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business connections to Burisma.
Rice also said she thought Trump’s mention of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, during the call was “out of bounds.”
“The call is murky, it is really murky. I don’t like for the president of the United States to mention an American citizen for investigation to a foreign leader,” Rice said.
Rice was secretary of state under Republican President George W. Bush.
The United States has been highly supportive of Ukraine against the threat from Russia, especially after the takeover of the Crimea in 2014.
Rice, who went to the White House as a Soviet specialist, said any non-official persons carrying messages for the U.S. administration should make sure they are carrying the same message as the secretary of state or national security adviser.