Tillerson testifies he wasn't aware of indicted Trump ally's foreign policy advice

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s first secretary of State took the stand Monday in the foreign agent trial of Trump’s longtime friend, testifying that he was unaware that real estate investor Tom Barrack was relaying nonpublic information about the Trump administration’s discussions to officials from a foreign government or that he was otherwise involved in Trump’s foreign policy deliberations.

Rex Tillerson, who served as the Trump administration’s top diplomat for a little over a year before being fired by tweet, is the first member of Trump’s administration to testify in Barrack’s trial, which began last month in federal court in Brooklyn.

Barrack, along with his former aide Matthew Grimes, were charged last year with acting as foreign agents of the United Arab Emirates without notifying the attorney general as prosecutors contend they should have. Barrack is also accused of obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

Defense attorneys for Barrack have sought to argue that officials within the U.S. 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.

But 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.

“You don’t want outside parties to have that information and try to use it to their advantage,” Tillerson said of such deliberations.

Tillerson has, for the most part, remained out of the public eye since leaving office. His testimony on Monday marked the rare occasion that Tillerson has opened up about his tumultuous time in the Trump administration. Following his appearance on the witness stand, Tillerson was whisked out of the courthouse by aides through a separate entrance.

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. 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 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.

"It was evident that at times Mr. 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.

One incident at the focus of prosecutors’ questioning Monday was the U.S. response to the blockade launched against Qatar in June 2017 by the Emiratis, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen.

According 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.

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. 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.

Tillerson said that the UAE declined an invitation to the possible summit, which ultimately never took place.

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. “needs to retain the full capacity to deliberate” on issues, as well as to change its position.

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. 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.

A 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.

He spent much of his cross-examination homing in on Tillerson’s long tenure as the chief executive of ExxonMobil.

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.

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.”

During 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. “I had my attorneys and lawyers look at the law,” Tillerson said, explaining that he “wanted to be sure if we needed to register, we registered.” Ultimately his attorneys decided it wasn’t necessary, Tillerson said.

But while Tillerson acknowledged that in many foreign countries it would be difficult to conduct business without engaging with top government officials — some of whom might hold significant business roles in addition to roles within that government’s national security apparatus — prosecutors sought to draw key distinctions between how Tillerson and Barrack conducted themselves in the private sector.

Unlike what prosecutors contend Barrack did, Tillerson never asked a foreign government for talking points ahead of a media appearance, sought edits from foreign government officials on op-eds he’d written or provided officials from a foreign government with nonpublic information about the U.S. government, he said.

Tillerson sought to downplay the notion that he was at odds with the president any more than was usual, describing one instance in which Trump urged Tillerson in a tweet not to “waste your time” negotiating with the North Koreans over their nuclear weapons program as part of a “good cop, bad cop” strategy.

When asked about Trump’s apparent support for the Qatari blockade on the same day that Tillerson called for easing it, Tillerson argued that he felt Trump’s stance was “incorrect,” primarily because it was “premature.” He noted that eventually Trump came around to supporting an end to the blockade, which happened last year.

Lawyers for Barrack first signaled Tillerson’s likely testimony over the weekend, in a court filing urging that the government be compelled to produce Tillerson on Monday rather than Tuesday, given the court’s plans to adjourn early for Yom Kippur and prosecutors’ supposed contention that the former secretary would be unavailable past Oct. 4.

Tillerson’s testimony was nearly derailed, however, by a reminder of the ongoing Covid pandemic.

During a morning break, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Cogan announced that a member of the jury had notified the court that they may have Covid-19. After discussing whether to adjourn for the day — or potentially until later in the week due to the Jewish holiday — prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to dismiss the juror and seat an alternate.

Cogan then asked whether the court should inform the rest of the jury, noting that very few had been wearing masks as a result of the courthouse’s recently lifted requirement to do so but that the juror in question had been separated from the rest of the jury, which was aware that she hadn’t been feeling well. He ultimately did not say anything to the jury.