Former CIA Director Leon Panetta said Friday that President Donald Trump inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to the White House later this year "raises a lot of questions."
"We don't know what went on in that one-on-one meeting between President Trump and President Putin," Panetta, also who served as Defense Secretary in the Obama administration, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
"The president owes it to the American people to explain just exactly what they talked about and whether or not any agreements were made.
"It just doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of the kind of diplomatic strategy that most presidents would implement at this point in time."
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday on Twitter that Trump directed National Security Adviser John Bolton to invite Putin to Washington this fall.
The president's move came despite U.S. lawmakers and top officials in his administration not having been briefed on what Trump and Putin discussed in Monday's summit in Helsinki with only interpreters present.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was caught off-guard by the news, which he learned through a question posed at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
"This last meeting was a disaster," Panetta told Blitzer, referring to the Helsinki summit. "Does he really want to repeat another disaster in the fall?
"That would really be harmful, not only to our country, but to our relationship with other countries in the world."
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