Donald Trump attempted to head off a Republican rebellion against his nomination of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state by rolling out some of the party’s most respected foreign policy hands to insist the ExxonMobil chief’s Russia ties did not disqualify him for the job.
Robert Gates and Condoleezza Rice, life-long Russia experts who respectively headed the Pentagon and state department during the George W Bush administration, endorsed the nomination, with Mr Gates calling the oil executive a “person of great integrity”.
Mr Trump decided to nominate Mr Tillerson for the top US diplomatic post despite criticism that his ties to Vladimir Putin raised troubling questions at a time when intelligence agencies have found that Russia waged a cyber drive to undermine Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump’s Democratic rival.
The endorsements by Mr Gates and Ms Rice raised the prospect of an internecine confirmation fight over Mr Tillerson, who must be cleared by the Senate before assuming the post. ExxonMobil is a client of Mr Gates’ consulting firm, whose founders include Ms Rice.
Republican senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, former Trump campaign rivals, joined a phalanx of top Democrats to criticise the Texas oilman.
“While Rex Tillerson is a respected businessman, I have serious concerns about his nomination,” Mr Rubio said. “The next secretary of state must be someone who views the world with moral clarity, is free of potential conflicts of interest, has a clear sense of America’s interests and will be a forceful advocate for America’s foreign policy goals to the president.”
Mr Rubio, a member of the committee that must vet Mr Tillerson’s nomination before it moves to the full Senate, could alone block approval.
Mr Trump described Mr Tillerson as “one of the great business leaders of the world”, once again tapping a Washington outsider with no government experience to a top administration role. “His tenacity, broad experience and deep understanding of geopolitics make him an excellent choice for secretary of state,” the president-elect said.
Mr Tillerson has decades of experience dealing with foreign leaders but his award of Russia’s Order of Friendship by Mr Putin in 2013 has been cited repeatedly by critics. Following the Texan’s nomination, Yuri Ushakov, Mr Putin’s foreign policy adviser, said that all Russian officials – not just Mr Putin – had good relations with the Exxon chief.
Mr Tillerson is not the only member of Mr Trump’s national security team to have faced questions about Kremlin ties. Michael Flynn, the retired general tapped as national security adviser, has been criticised for accepting money to attend a Moscow dinner where he was seated beside Mr Putin.
