GOP senators challenge Trump on secretary of state prospect"s Russia ties

Pakistani Ship Reached in Russia

Sen. Marco Rubio and other GOP senators fired a warning shot this weekend over President-elect Donald Trumps consideration of ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson for secretary of state, raising concerns about the global energy titans reported Russian ties.

Tillerson is thought to be a favorite for the position of top U.S. diplomat and met again with the president-elect in New York on Saturday, though Trump would not confirm his selection in an interview with Fox News Sunday. The president-elect said only that hes getting very, very close to an announcement.

But Rubio, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and later endorsed Trump, posted a thinly veiled warning about Tillerson on Twitter Sunday morning, without mentioning him by name.

Tillerson is reported to have close ties to russia. democrats already have seized on the accounts, with the Democratic National Committee preemptively declaring such a choice another victory for Vladimir Putin.

Republicans have taken a more measured but still cautious approach.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told Fox News on Saturday that Putin is a thug and while he doesnt know the nature of Tillersons relationship with the Russian leader, its a matter of concern.

Speaking Sunday with CBS News Face the Nation, McCain said the Senate would give him a fair hearing and noted Tillersons ties could be strictly commercial.

But he reiterated that it should be a matter of concern. He voiced concern that Tillersons relationship could color his approach toward Putin and the Russian threat.

Amid the bipartisan debate, Trump tweeted late Sunday morning: Whether I choose him or not for State- Rex Tillerson, the Chairman & CEO of ExxonMobil, is a world class player and dealmaker. Stay tuned!

The Wall Street Journalreported last week on Tillersons ties to Putin and other world leaders.

Under his leadership, Exxon has steadily expanded its Russian business even as rivals faced expropriation and regulatory obstacles.

In 2011, Tillerson announced an expansive relationship with Russia"s Rosneft that will spend years and billions of dollars developing technology to explore and produce oil and gas in icy waters in the Russian Arctic. In 2013, Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship on Tillerson.

Trump, though, still has not announced his choice for the State Department job.

Trump told Fox News Sunday that he has others as candidates for the post, while lauding Tillersons record.

He"s much more than a business executive.I mean, he"s a world-class player. He"s in charge of an oil company that"s pretty much double the size of his next serious competitor.It"s been a company that"s been unbelievably managed.And to me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well.He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals for the company -- not for himself -- for the company, Trump said. I have tremendous respect for him.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News Sunday Morning Futures that Tillerson would be a smart pick.

Noting that experts in the State Department would be on hand to assist the next secretary, McCarthy said Tillerson has an understanding of what world leaders are looking for and knows what buttons kind of push them.

Speaking on ABC News This Week, incoming Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus also defended Tillerson as an incredible businessman and American patriot.

While noting a conclusion has not been made, he stressed that Tillerson is in the business of finding oil around the world, and said the fact that he actually has a relationship with people like Vladimir Putin and others across the globe is something that [we] shouldn"t be ... embarrassed by.

Asked about tough questions from Republican senators, he said, We don"t have concerns about confirmation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/11/gop-senators-challenge-trump-on-secretary-state-prospects-russia-ties.html

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Ex-Trump adviser: US shows "complete disregard for Russia"s interests"

STALKED BY A SKINWALKER! A True Scary Story from Russia

Carter Page, a former Trump adviser, published an op-ed in a Russian government run news agency.

Carter Page, a businessman whom Donald Trump named as a foreign policy adviser in March but distanced himself from following reports of scrutiny into Pages ties with Russia, published an op-ed on Thursday arguing that the U.S. shows complete disregard for Russias interests and must soften its stance toward the country.

The op-ed published in Sputnik, a news agency backed by the Russian government is critical of the Obama administrations relations with Russia, suggesting that its response to the countrys annexation of Crimea was interference in the international arena. The U.S. ought to try to respect, rather than provoke, the Kremlin, he suggested, so the two countries do not end up on a nuclear brink.

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President Obama has advocated for the concept of mutual respect in a domestic context, but a step back from the high-handed brink of todays diplomacy could help to create a lasting change in the trajectory of global affairs, Page wrote. In contrast to the idea of mutual respect, the U.S. Governments actions in the domestic democratic processes of Russias neighboring states stand as a primary example of interference in the international arena.

He named Ukraine in particular and implied that the U.S. should not disregard Russias interests in its foreign policy decisions: Among the national interests of Moscow and in light of continued instability, Ukraine has risen as a primary example of these same trends. While no simple answer to these problems exist, a complete disregard for Russias interests further increases the expected longevity of todays downward trajectory, he wrote.

This is not the first time Page has sounded off on the U.S.-Russian relationship or advocated a position more favorable to the Kremlin. In August, The Washington Post reported that he had praised both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump and criticized American foreign policy before international audiences. Last month, Yahoo News reported that U.S. intelligence officials were investigating whether he was communicating with Russian officials and discussed that a President Trump might end economic sanctions against the country.

Trump said in March that Page was advising him on foreign policy issues the real estate mogul described Page as among a group of some of the people that we are dealing with but campaign aides walked that back when scrutiny into Pages Russian ties made the news in late September.

Julie Ioffe, in POLITICO Magazine profile of Page published on Sept. 23, found that he isn"t especially well-known in Russia, either. [D]espite the tightly knit nature of the expat business community in Russia, no one I spoke to had ever heard of Carter Page, she wrote.

A Trump campaign policy staffer told Ioffe at the time that Carter is a red herring, not a Rasputin. Hes never met Trump, never briefed him. He has zero influence, none.

In the Yahoo News report, Trump campaign also officials denied that Page was advising or speaking for the campaign. After Pages op-ed was published on Thursday, campaign spokesman Jason Miller reiterated in an email that Carter Page has no role with our campaign, and he did not respond to a followup question about when Trump and Page had cut ties.

Trump himself has offered praise of Putin, suggesting he is a strong leader, and Democrats allege that the Kremlin is attempting to swing the election in the New York moguls favor. U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe that the Russian government is behind cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and a hack of the email account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Source: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/carter-page-trump-sputnik-op-ed-229740

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