The former secretary said that in the course of his work for Exxon, he’d met most heads of state “many times” and knew several “quite well.”ĭuring that line of questioning, Tillerson revealed he had looked into whether or not he needed to register as a foreign agent during his time as Exxon. Jackson highlighted the similarities between Tillerson’s activities while in the private sector and what prosecutors have painted as nefarious behavior by Barrack, such as meeting with top officials from various foreign governments. He spent much of his cross-examination homing in on Tillerson’s long tenure as the chief executive of ExxonMobil. Apart from one or two conversations during which Barrack expressed interest in a potential ambassadorship in the administration and a potential hallway run-in in the West Wing, Tillerson said he had no further knowledge of Barrack’s relationship with the president, and said said he did not recall Trump ever bringing Barrack up.Ī defense attorney for Barrack, Randall Jackson, got Tillerson to concede that he wasn’t aware of every person from whom Trump regularly sought counsel, inside or outside the White House. The former secretary said that he’d met Barrack for the first time in Barrack’s capacity as the chair of Trump’s inaugural committee. “needs to retain the full capacity to deliberate” on issues, as well as to change its position. He said that he was unaware Barrack had allegedly passed nonpublic information to someone outside of the government, but criticized such disclosures, saying that the U.S. Tillerson said that the UAE declined an invitation to the possible summit, which ultimately never took place. According to prosecutors, Al-Malik then relayed that information to Emirati officials, who were opposed to such a summit, and that Barrack advised Trump against holding a summit. Prosecutors allege that Barrack shared that information with Rashid Al-Malik, an Emirati national who has also been charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the UAE, but who remains at large. response to the blockade launched against Qatar in June 2017 by the Emiratis, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen.Īccording to Tillerson, as the diplomatic dispute in Qatar dragged on that year, Trump had the idea to host a summit at Camp David to bring Qatari leaders together with the leaders of the Persian Gulf nations leading the blockade. One incident at the focus of prosecutors’ questioning Monday was the U.S. Kushner was engaging with the same government officials on the same issues I was engaging with them on and that those messages were not consistent,” he said on the witness stand. Tillerson conceded that there was friction with Kushner, though he stressed his frustrations lay not in Kushner on occasion going behind Tillerson’s back but in the lack of message coordination on those occasions. But his tenure was less idyllic, undercut by the former president’s occasionally publicly contradicting his top diplomat as well as the outsize influence of Trump’s son-in-law turned adviser, Jared Kushner, and Trump’s slapdash governing style - tensions that defense attorneys sought to highlight. Tillerson testified that he took the role of secretary of State because he felt a duty to serve after being bypassed in the draft during the Vietnam War. Following his appearance on the witness stand, Tillerson was whisked out of the courthouse by aides through a separate entrance. His testimony on Monday marked the rare occasion that Tillerson has opened up about his tumultuous time in the Trump administration. Tillerson has, for the most part, remained out of the public eye since leaving office. “You don’t want outside parties to have that information and try to use it to their advantage,” Tillerson said of such deliberations. government, and potentially the president himself, were aware that their client was backchanneling with the Emiratis, and during the trial they have asserted that Barrack was under the direction or control of no one but himself.īut Tillerson, who was called as a witness by federal prosecutors, testified that he was unaware that Barrack was privy to what he said were “sensitive” internal discussions, nor did he ever request that Barrack serve as a conduit between Washington and Abu Dhabi. Defense attorneys for Barrack have sought to argue that officials within the U.S.
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