CNN’s Phil Mudd: The Idea Trump Wants to Talk to Mueller May Just Be Him ‘Pretending to Play Along’
CNN Counterterrorism Analyst Phil Mudd believes that special counsel Robert Mueller has a very specific, very good reason for meeting with Kristin Davis, otherwise known as “The Manhattan Madam.”
“Mueller is methodical,” Mudd said this afternoon “The man doesn’t make a move without a reason. So it’s the methodical Mueller meets the Manhattan Madam. Let me give you a couple of reasons why this might happen.”
“The Mueller I knew, I worked with him for four and a half years, does not do fishing expeditions,” he continued. “I can think of two reasons. One is people, and the second is money. If Roger Stone is in the middle of this investigation, one of the basic sort of questions or lines of questions you would have for her is what do you know about him, but what else do you know about people he introduced you to, people he talked about, people who were in his circle. I want people questions to fill out what we know about who Mr. Stone was in contact with.
“The second issue, I assume her business dealings – I want to be polite on camera – were interesting and varied,” Mudd said. “I want to know if Mr. Stone had a business relationship with her, where that money came from? Who paid? How did they pay?”
“Obviously, that was an important question for the Manafort investigation so far,” he added. “He was paying for clothes with wire transfers from overseas. If she had a financial arrangement with Stone, who paid for what? I think it’s pretty interesting.”
Mudd also opined that President Donald Trump‘s expressed willingness to meet with the special counsel is smoke and mirrors.
“People keep saying there’s a divide between the legal team and the president. That may be true. There’s another simpler explanation which is the president’s pretending to play along, pretending to be on a different side than his legal team and actually behind closed doors what he’s saying is I’m going make it look like Mueller made the conditions so difficult that I couldn’t speak,” Mudd explained.
“I think this is all a game and I think the game is to get the president off the hook because if he walks in that room, let me tell you who’s going to win and it’s not going to be the president. Director Mueller is going to win that game, I guarantee you.”
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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