President-elect Donald Trump is likely to select Rex Tillerson, the longtime CEO of ExxonMobil with deep ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as his secretary of state, according to two people close to the presidential transition team.

Trump has engaged in an unusually public, weeks-long search that divided his top advisers to find the nation’s next top diplomat, meeting twice with former critic Mitt Romney and a host of other contenders, including Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.


Trump hailed Tillerson as a “world-class player” on Saturday and praised him as a skillful manager of one of the biggest companies on the global stage in a Fox News interview excerpt that will air in full on Sunday.

“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.

One person close to the transition said Trump was now “certain” to select Tillerson, while others cautioned that he is only the leading candidate. “Not done deal,” insisted another senior transition source. Other finalists have included Romney, Corker, retired Adm. James Stavridis, who met with Trump this week, and John Bolton, who two sources said was likelier to end up as the No. 2 official at State.

Trump’s transition team pushed back publicly on the initial report Saturday, from NBC News, that Trump had fully settled on Tillerson. “No announcements on Secretary of State until next week at the earliest,” tweeted Jason Miller, the communications director for the transition.

Earlier this month, however, Miller had tweeted that Trump had not made a decision on selecting retired Gen. James Mattis as his defense secretary after news reports that he had. Trump announced Mattis as his pick only hours later.

Tillerson’s ties to Russia — and Putin in particular — could complicate his confirmation in the Senate, especially as Republican hard-liners on Russia were already raising questions.

“I don’t know what Mr. Tillerson's relationship with Vladimir Putin was,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on Saturday on Fox News. “But I’ll tell you it is a matter of concern to me."

Tillerson’s emergence as Trump’s likely choice comes less than 24 hours after a bombshell report that the assessment of the Central Intelligence Agency was that Russia intervened in the 2016 American presidential election by hacking into the emails of the Democratic National Committee, and one of Clinton’s top advisers, in an effort to boost Trump.

Trump's transition team dismissed that report in an unusually caustic prepared statement: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

But Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike expressed concern. “Russia is trying to break the back of democracies — and democratic movements — all over the world,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Saturday.

As head of ExxonMobil, the biggest U.S. oil producer and one of the largest corporations in the world, Tillerson oversees a sprawling operation that stretches across dozens of countries, which could raise questions about whether he could separate himself from the business interests of his company.

Tillerson’s nomination will face fierce resistance from Democrats and environmental activists, who have made Exxon their No. 1 enemy in the fight against fossil fuel companies. Democrats are already planning to press Tillerson during any confirmation hearing about whether the oil giant suppressed decades-old internal research about the threat of climate change, as the company's critics have alleged.

Tillerson, who has no prior government experience, is the latest wealthy business leader who could be chosen for a top Cabinet post by Trump, joining Steven Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs, who is his choice for Treasury secretary, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, who he tapped to lead the Commerce Department, and fast-food CEO Andy Puzder as labor secretary.

Trump's search for a secretary of state has played out in dramatic fashion on cable news and social media, with the president-elect's top advisers publicly making the case for their preferred candidates.

Kellyanne Conway and Newt Gingrich criticized Romney in television interviews, even as Romney huddled with the president-elect in Trump Tower. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also publicly lobbied for the job, but Trump's transition team announced on Friday that he had taken himself out of the running.

Ultimately, people close to Trump say he has been drawn to Tillerson because of his experience with international dealmaking.

“In his case, he’s much more than a business executive; he’s a world-class player. He’s in charge of, I guess, the largest company in the world,” Trump told Fox News with some of his characteristic exaggeration. “He’s in charge of an oil company that’s pretty much double the size of its next nearest competitor. It’s been a company that’s been unbelievably managed."

The Texas-born Tillerson, 64, has spent his entire professional life at Exxon, joining the company as an engineer in 1975 and becoming its chairman and CEO in 2006.

Tillerson’s days at Exxon were coming to an end whether or not he scored the secretary of state job. He’ll reach Exxon's mandatory retirement age of 65 in March and is expected to be replaced by Exxon veteran Darren Woods. Tillerson was paid $27.3 million last year and owns shares in Exxon worth more than $160 million.

Tillerson's ties to Russia and Putin stretch back to the 1990s, and he has been critical of the U.S. sanctions imposed in 2014 that have constrained Exxon’s work in the country. Russia is one of the top three oil producers in the world, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States.

In 2011, Tillerson joined Putin at his vacation home to sign a lucrative deal that allowed Exxon to explore oil fields in Russia’s Arctic. In exchange, state-controlled oil company OAO Rosneft was allowed for the first time to acquire ownership stakes in Exxon projects in the United States. Putin later awarded Tillerson with the Order of Friendship, one of Russia’s highest honors, for the company’s “big contribution to developing cooperation in the energy sector.”

Tillerson made waves in 2014 when he spoke at an energy summit in Moscow alongside Igor Sechin, a Rosneft executive and close confidant of Putin who has been sanctioned by the Treasury Department.

Exxon has faced scrutiny in the aftermath of a series of investigative reports that allege the company has known for decades about the effect of fossil fuels on climate change. Two state attorneys general — New York's Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts' Maura Healey — have launched fraud investigations into whether Exxon misled the public and its investors about the threat of climate change.

Exxon is fighting the state attorneys general in court. The company has said the investigations are politically motivated. An Exxon spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Trump has questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, alleging that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. During the campaign, he vowed to “cancel” the Paris climate change agreement, though he added in a November interview with The New York Times that he has an “open mind” about the deal.

Meanwhile, Exxon says it supports a tax on carbon emissions as the best option for policymakers looking to fight climate change and it praised the Paris agreement, calling it an “important step forward by world governments in addressing the serious risks of climate change.”

Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.