Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he found out that President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner had multiple meetings with foreign officials without his knowledge.
Tillerson, who served in Trump’s administration from February 2017 to March 2018, said in a private hearing with the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May that he walked in on Kushner with Mexico’s foreign secretary at a restaurant in Washington, D.C.
He was there for a business meeting and didn’t know the Mexican official was even in the country. He alleges that the two put together a “comprehensive plan of action” together while keeping Tillerson in the dark.
“I happened to be having a business dinner at a restaurant in town,” Tillerson said. “And the owner … came around and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Secretary, you might be interested to know the Foreign Secretary of Mexico is seated at a table near the back, in case you want to go by and say hello to him.’ Very innocent on his part. And so I did. I walked back.”
“And Mr. Kushner … and the Foreign Secretary were at the table having dinner. And I could see the color go out of the face of the Foreign Secretary of Mexico as I smiled big, and I said, ‘Welcome to Washington. I don’t want to interrupt what y’all are doing. Give me a call next time you’re coming to town.’ And I left it at that,” he said.
Tillerson said the foreign secretary believed the meeting already had Tillerson’s blessing and had been cleared with the State Department, but he said that he hadn’t heard about any of it.
Tillerson also opened up about a meeting between Kushner, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and the leaders for United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia over a plan to blockade Qatar. Tillerson, again, vented that he wasn’t aware of the meeting, nor aware of any plans to support a blockade.
Read the entire transcript below:
