President-elect and his pick for secretary of state both face trial by fire over business deals and links to Moscow, amid claims of election interference

By nominating Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, Donald Trump will ignite a battle in Congress over the two issues that look set to overshadow the opening chapters of his presidency: Russia and conflicts of interest.



Tillerson embodies both quandaries. The ExxonMobil executive has grown close to Vladimir Putin and his circle through a succession of oil deals. The fate of those deals would give him a private interest when he comes to negotiate with Moscow as secretary of state. Lifting sanctions would unshackle ExxonMobil’s planned multi-billion dollar operations in Russia, and boost Tillerson’s retirement fund.

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His confirmation hearings in the Senate will be a bitter and emotive struggle. For Trump’s legion critics, the opaque ties with Russia and his glaring conflicts of interest represent existential threats to US democracy. Trump is giving the nod to Tillerson, the recipient of Moscow’s Order of Friendship, as a slaughter is underway in Aleppo, likely to be one of the worst war crimes of the century so far, in which Russia is complicit.

Furthermore, confirmation hearings will run concurrently with a congressional investigation into what role Russian intelligence played in tilting the US presidential election and giving Trump an edge. The legitimacy of his presidency, for a majority of the US electorate and much of the world beyond, will be at stake in those hearings.

At the same time as declaring, by characteristic tweet, that a secretary of state nomination would come on Tuesday, Trump also casually revealed how he would be dealing with his own deep conflicts of interest – by “leaving” his businesses and devolving their management to his two eldest sons, Donald Jr and Eric, while offering that the organisation would do “no new deals” during his time in office.

The brief bulletins on Twitter came in place of a promised press conference on the future of his businesses that was to have taken place on Thursday, but was then summarily cancelled. Just before midnight on Monday, Trump tweeted that he would face press questions “in the near future to discuss the business, Cabinet picks and all other topics of interest”. The timing was left vague. His spokeswoman said it would be left until next month.

Also left vague was what “leaving” the Trump Organisation would mean – stepping down from management or divesting his ownership stake – or whether selling his share would lessen his conflict of interest as president, if the decisions he takes in the Oval Office could enrich his children. It is also doubtful whether a vast sprawling empire like the Trump Organisation, with a presence in some 20 countries, can function without doing “new deals”. Entering agreements with governments and partners is what it does in its day-to-day operations.

US law allows the president to have a conflict of interest. However, if businesses in which he had a stake benefit from payments from foreign governments or foreign state-owned companies, he would risk violating the “emoluments clause” of the constitution.

For his part, Tillerson could sell the ExxonMobil stock in his retirement fund, but the question would remain whether that sale would divest him of his loyalty to a company that has employed him for more than four decades, that operates almost as a state itself and outweighs the economies of most of the countries on the planet.

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Trump’s decisions to choose Tillerson, and to keep his business empire in the family, represent acts of defiance of the traditionalists in the Republican party. Veteran senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham will make the Tillerson confirmation, and the investigation into Russian election meddling, trials by fire for the new president. It would take the revolt of just one more Republican senator to rob Trump of his majority.

The president-elect may have been encouraged in his choice of Tillerson by the endorsement of grandees from former GOP administrations, including James Baker, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates. Their encouragement may soothe nervous Republicans but they have conflict of interest issues of their own. Baker’s law firm represents ExxonMobil and Russian state-owned oil and gas companies. Rice and Gates are partners in an international consulting firm that was reportedly hired by ExxonMobil.

One by one, the party leaders that once despised Trump fell into line behind him as his campaign gathered its unexpected momentum. The president-elect is betting the Republicans will line up once more, for fear of missing the opportunity of running all three branches of government.

That is a high-stakes gamble. The scale of the business conflicts in the new administration and the blatant influence of Moscow in US politics makes this uncharted territory for all involved.