Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has told Congress that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner repeatedly conducted diplomacy behind his back, undermining his authority. In a seven-hour closed-door interview with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tillerson described how he discovered Kushner had been holding secret meetings with foreign officials without informing the State Department.
Tillerson recounted one particularly awkward incident when he walked into a Washington restaurant and found Mexico's then-foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, dining with Kushner. Tillerson said he only learned of the Mexican diplomat's visit when the restaurant owner told him. 'I could see the colour go out of the face of the foreign secretary of Mexico as I smiled big and said: 'Welcome to Washington,'' Tillerson told the panel.
On another occasion, neither Tillerson nor then-Defence Secretary Jim Mattis knew that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates planned to blockade Qatar in 2017, even though Kushner and Steve Bannon had been told about it at a secret dinner. Tillerson said he and Mattis learned of the blockade during a joint visit to Australia, leaving them scrambling to assess the crisis. 'It makes me angry because I didn't have a say. The State Department's views were never expressed,' Tillerson said.
Tillerson's testimony, seen by Reuters, reveals how his 13-month tenure as secretary of state was undermined by public disagreements with President Donald Trump and exclusion from key discussions. Tillerson described Trump as undisciplined and said he did not like to read, forcing Tillerson to keep briefings short and simple. Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018, calling him 'dumb as a rock' on Twitter.
Tillerson emphasised that Trump never asked him to break the law, and said there had been no discussion of Kushner's or Trump's business dealings in relation to foreign policy. The interview was part of the committee's oversight of foreign policy after Democrats won control of the House in November 2018.
