Here comes Rex Tillerson’s revenge
Rex Tillerson may be the kind of greedy oil baron who was willing to do business with Vladimir Putin, but he’s not the kind of traitor who was willing to sell out his country to Vladimir Putin. That’s why Donald Trump ended up firing Tillerson. It’s also why Tillerson is still in one piece while Trump is in the process of being impeached. Now Tillerson is about to get his revenge.
Last night Bloomberg broke the news that in 2017, Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to convince Rex Tillerson to abuse his position as Secretary of State to get U.S. federal charges dropped against Turkish criminal Reza Zarrab. Based on the level of detail about Tillerson’s actions, including having vented about it in the hallway to John Kelly, there’s little doubt that the source for this story is Tillerson’s own camp. Given the timing, this is fascinating.
By putting this information out there, Tillerson basically just invited himself to get subpoenaed by the House impeachment inquiry. That means we’ll soon see him testify about Donald Trump’s crimes. And because Tillerson doesn’t work for Trump anymore, there’s really no way for Trump to stop Tillerson from testifying. In fact Tillerson already testified to the House about Trump’s antics behind closed doors five months ago, in a hearing whose revelations have since largely remained secret. If Tillerson testified against Trump once, he’ll do it again.
On top of it, this Rex Tillerson story will surely get John Kelly subpoenaed as well, though we’re not quite sure whether or not he’ll agree to show up. The bottom line is that each time a new rock gets turned over in Donald Trump’s cascading scandals, even more people get roped into the House impeachment inquiry. They don’t all have to cooperate for the House Democrats to score a victory – just some of them.
