Retired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman accused former President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Rudy Giuliani of running “a political errand to serve the interests of a corrupt president.”
During an appearance on MSNBC Monday night, host Ali Velshi brought up a passage from Vindman’s new book discussing Giuliani’s move to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and pushing a false narrative that Ukraine was responsible for hacking the 2016 election.
“It was a political errand to serve the interests of a corrupt president,” Vindman said. “A president that was seeking to tip the scales in his favor in an upcoming election.”
He added, “This was wrong. This is not the way our system is supposed to work, and that the very foundation of our democracy is based on free and fair elections, and the president was looking to upend that.”
Watch Vindman’s comments below:
When asked if he dismissed Giuliani’s claims as “rantings,” Vindman explained, “I did early on, but then Ambassador Yovanovitch was removed from her position, and it started to interfere with the work that we were doing in the White House.”
The former president ordered the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after receiving complaints from allies outside of the administration, including Giuliani, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
They claimed Yovanovitch was undermining Trump and getting in the way of convincing Ukraine to investigate Biden.
Trump was asked about her removal. He told reporters, “I don’t know if I recalled her or somebody recalled her, but I heard very, very bad things about her for a long period of time. Not good.”
Vindman later said Giuliani was not “getting the play he needed with the Ukrainian government, and President Trump pulled the plug to signal that this is where he wanted the Ukrainians to act. He wanted them involved in this investigation.”