REX TILLERSON

The FBI has seized the electronic data of a retired four-star general who authorities say made false statements and withheld incriminating documents about his role in an illegal foreign lobbying campaign on behalf of Qatar.

The annual event is headlined by notable speakers, which have included former U.S. presidents, elected officials and business executives.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has a book coming this fall that covers his years in the Trump administration and, according to his publisher, offers “unvarnished appraisals of the deals made and characters encountered along the way.”.

March is Texas History Month, and our state’s rich heritage is as much a path forward as a look back. Our hard-fought independence was observed this month with Texas Independence Day and Texas Flag Day March 2, coincidentally Sam Houston’s birthday; Alamo Heroes Day March 6; and Goliad Heroes Day March 26. “And it’s so important to continue to teach Texas history as a required course.”Dr. Lauro Cavazos, the first Hispanic appointed to a U.S. Cabinet post, shared that same love of learning Texas history in a two-room schoolhouse on the sprawling King Ranch. Teaching Texas history in schools is an imperative we must continue no matter how the winds of education flutter.

Some of the state’s most successful natives credit, at least in part, their success to growing up in this land of possibility.

After Putin met Tillerson, billions were made, but at what cost?

The Biden administration is extending for one year a Trump-era ban on the use of U.S. passports for travel to North Korea.

Report: Rudy Giuliani facing DOJ inquiry into Turkish lobbying

If President Joe Biden has any private words with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at their meeting next week, U.S. interpreters and diplomats will be standing by to document their high-stakes encounter.

Aides to El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele say he's refused to meet with a visiting senior U.S. diplomat over what he sees as a pattern of slights from Democrats and the Biden administration.

Anti-coup protesters display pictures of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, Myanmar, Tuesday, March 2, 2021. The Obama administration reveled in the restoration of civilian rule in the longtime U.S. pariah as a top foreign policy achievement and a potential model for engaging with other adversaries, such as Iran and Cuba. But today, Myanmar is once again an international outcast, facing a new wave of U.S. sanctions. Still, the Obama administration continued to have faith in her. Despite Kerry’s two trips to Myanmar, the administration became rapidly consumed with the Iran nuclear deal and normalization of ties with Cuba.

(AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)MIAMI – Newly filed lobbying records show Venezuela’s socialist government previously hired a longtime Democratic Party donor for $6 million at the same time it was lobbying to discourage the U.S. from imposing sanctions on the oil-rich nation. Federal prosecutors in Miami are also investigating whether the Republican broke foreign lobbying rules. Payments came from a little-known, Delaware-registered subsidiary, PDV USA, which provided shareholder services to PDVSA independent of Citgo's oil operations. “Wiss was engaged to provide PDV USA and its affiliates with legal services only,” she wrote in an e-mailed response to questions. PDV USA said Wiss provided updates on disputes involving PDVSA and advice on immigration, insurance, and cryptocurrency.

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration paused or put under review a wide swath of Trump-era foreign policies as America’s new top diplomat took the helm of the State Department. Appearing in the press briefing room, which had been rarely used during the Trump administration, Blinken pledged to respect and be accessible to journalists and to restore the State Department's daily press briefings beginning next week. Of all the steps that Trump and Pompeo took in their waning days “that's the priority in my book,” Blinken said of the designation. Blinken said the administration is prepared to ease sanctions that the Trump administration re-imposed on Iran as long as Iran returns to full compliance with the 2015 deal. At that point, Blinken said the administration would look to strengthen and lengthen the terms of the accord.

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration on Wednesday paused or put under review a wide swath of Trump-era foreign policies as America’s new top diplomat took the helm of the State Department. Appearing in the press briefing room, which had been rarely used during the Trump administration, Blinken pledged to respect and be accessible to journalists and to restore the State Department's daily press briefings beginning next week. Of all the steps that Trump and Pompeo took in their waning days “that's the priority in my book,” Blinken said of the designation. Blinken said the administration is prepared to ease sanctions that the Trump administration re-imposed on Iran as long as Iran returns to full compliance with the 2015 deal. At that point, Blinken said the administration would look to strengthen and lengthen the terms of the accord.

FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2020, file photo, Tony Blinken, President Joe Bidens nominee for Secretary of State, speaks at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del. Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. Shortly after his confirmation, Blinken took the oath of office at a private ceremony at the State Department. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department.

This Friday, Jan. 8, 2021 image shows the suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump. It began with a May 4, 2009, tweet promoting Donald Trump's upcoming appearance on David Letterman's show. “I said, ‘Let’s call you @realDonaldTrump — you’re the real Donald Trump,’” recalled Costanzo. In its most popular tweet, on Oct. 2, 2020, @realDonaldTrump announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the coronavirus. Trump deleted 1,166 tweets and, in his final months on the platform, had 471 tweets flagged by Twitter for misinformation, according to Factba.se.

This Friday, Jan. 8, 2021 image shows the suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump. It began with a May 4, 2009, tweet promoting Donald Trump's upcoming appearance on David Letterman's show. “I said, ‘Let’s call you @realDonaldTrump — you’re the real Donald Trump,’” recalled Costanzo. In its most popular tweet, on Oct. 2, 2020, @realDonaldTrump announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the coronavirus. Trump deleted 1,166 tweets and, in his final months on the platform, had 471 tweets flagged by Twitter for misinformation, according to Factba.se.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to deliver a speech extolling the Trump administration’s foreign policy this week in Georgia, ahead of key Senate run-off elections in the state that will determine control of the upper chamber of Congress. Pompeo is expected to address threats posed by China in an address to Georgia Tech on Wednesday, the university said. Pompeo will discuss “the China challenge to U.S. national security and academic freedom,” the university said. Pompeo has said a probe is underway, although State Department ethics officials have cleared him. But, the RNC speech from the roof of a Jerusalem hotel is not the only Pompeo appearance that has raised eyebrows.

President-elect Joe Bidens first wave of Cabinet picks and choices for his White House staff have prized staying power over star power, with a premium placed on government experience and proficiency as he looks to rebuild a depleted and demoralized federal bureaucracy. President-elect Joe Biden has prized staying power over star power when making his first wave of Cabinet picks and choices for White House staff, with a premium placed on government experience and proficiency as he looks to rebuild a depleted and demoralized federal bureaucracy. “Collectively, this team has secured some of the most defining national security and diplomatic achievements in recent memory — made possible through decades of experience working with our partners,” Biden said Tuesday as he unveiled his national security team. His choice for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was the deputy to that post under President Barack Obama. ___EDITOR'S NOTE — Jonathan Lemire has covered the White House and national politics for The Associated Press since 2013.

Thomas-Greenfield joined the State Department more than three decades ago, when Black women were even more of a rarity in the U.S. diplomatic corps than they are today. That makes her the most experienced diplomat of the six people named by Biden for top national security positions on Monday. Her tenure at the State Department rivals that of previous U.N. ambassadors like Richard Holbrooke, John Negroponte and Thomas Pickering, all of them white men. Other than secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is often the most high-profile foreign policy portfolio in a presidential administration. Thomas-Greenfield's immediate predecessors — all women — highlight that dichotomy: Rice, Samantha Power, Nikki Haley and Kelly Craft.

The picks include former Secretary of State John Kerry to take the lead on combating climate change. “America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is,” Kerry said. At 43, he will be one of the youngest national security advisers in history. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties with Biden. Blinken recently participated in a national security briefing with Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and weighed in publicly just last week on notable foreign policy issues in Egypt and Ethiopia.

WASHINGTON – Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he's voted in the Nov. 3 election — but not for the leader of his party. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, has said publicly that the New York real estate magnate is unfit for the presidency. In 2016, Romney wrote in the name of his wife, Ann, rather than vote for Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee. Trump later said he was trying to humiliate Romney, and the Cabinet post instead went to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. In the Senate, Romney was the lone Republican to vote for Trump's impeachment earlier this year.

“People need to understand how dangerous a moment we are in.”There are plenty of others weighing the same decision. But Mattis and Coats, like former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former national security adviser H.R. The White House punched back with an aggressive attack campaign aimed at discrediting her through a barrage of statements, interviews and denunciations from the lectern in the White House briefing room. “The White House knows if they show this is a very costly thing to do they will scare people from going forward," he said. He added that while more people are still considering coming forward, the White House tactics have worked to some extent — dissuading one senior official who had been on the cusp of speaking out.

Pompeo said in a statement that Hook has been my point person on Iran for over two years and he has achieved historic results.Hook will be replaced after an as-yet undetermined transition period as Iran envoy by Elliott Abrams, the U.S. envoy for Venezuela. Hook, a longtime Republican foreign policy fixture, was an early arrival in the Trump administration. After Tillerson was fired, Pompeo appointed Hook to the Iran position. As policy planning chief, Hook tried to strengthen the Iran deal, which Trump denounced during the 2016 presidential campaign as the worst deal ever and pledged to pull out from. Once he became Iran envoy, Hook was in charge of identifying sanctions to be restored and trying to lobby Europeans and others to follow suit.

The purpose: to lure Exxon back to Venezuela after a decade's absence and inject much-needed dynamism into the OPEC nation's collapsing oil industry. But Sessions did engage in other mediation efforts in Venezuela over the next 15 months. The earlier email regarding Exxon and his connection to Rivera was not known at the time. The five-sentence message sent to Sessions' personal email address, which starts with the word eagle," is short on specifics. The U.S. Department of State would be your best resource for any information regarding contacts made with Venezuela, a spokesman said.

The purpose: to lure Exxon back to Venezuela after a decade's absence and inject much-needed dynamism into the OPEC nation's collapsing oil industry. But Sessions did engage in other mediation efforts in Venezuela over the next 15 months. The earlier email regarding Exxon and his connection to Rivera was not known at the time. The five-sentence message sent to Sessions' personal email address, which starts with the word eagle," is short on specifics. The U.S. Department of State would be your best resource for any information regarding contacts made with Venezuela, a spokesman said.

Thanks to a mix of conventional and unconventional moves made possible by the Trump era, Nikki Haley has made herself an early front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. In a subsequent interview about the book, Haley made the argument that resisting the president publicly and to his face is fine, but doing so behind his back is not. This is the perfect way and perfect time for Haley to clearly set herself apart from the small group of "Never Trumpers" that remain in the GOP. Second, do we really need polls to tell us President Trump remains enormously popular among the Republican rank and file? He was greeted with overwhelming cheers in the deep red state of Alabama at the Alabama-LSU football game on Saturday.

The two former Cabinet members sought Haley's help in their endeavors to subvert the President but she refused, Haley wrote. However, Haley said she supported most of Trump's foreign policy decisions that others in the White House tried to block or slow down, according to the Post. Haley called Tillerson and Kelly's attempt to subvert the President "offensive" in an interview that aired Sunday on "CBS Sunday Morning." CNN has reached out to Kelly, Tillerson and the White House for comment. In her book, Haley describes multiple clashes within the White House surrounding foreign policy strategy, according to the Post.

REUTERS/Mike Segar/File PhotoHOUSTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Saturday that Republicans and Democrats need to work together for the good of the United States, while avoiding a direct reference to the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. The former diplomat later declined to comment on the impeachment process under way in the U.S. House of Representatives. The inquiry focuses on Trumps attempt to get the government of Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden. Since leaving the Trump administration, Tillerson, also the former chairman of Exxon Mobil Corp, has described the President as an undisciplined leader who did not like to read. Trump has criticized Tillerson as lazy as hell and dumb as a rock.

The case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleges that the company deceived investors about the true cost of climate change. Exxon assesses the impact of climate change through a public proxy cost, as well as through a greenhouse gas cost. These costs are meant to show shareholders that the company is calculating the impact of climate change and waning fossil fuel demand on long-term projects. Under cross-examination by Exxon attorney Ted Wells, Tillerson once again said that the company took climate change seriously for years, and that the company created a systematic approach for how to factor in increasing costs. When asked directly by Wells if the company would have any incentive to undercut cost assumptions, Tillerson said no.

A trial in which energy giant ExxonMobil stands accused of misleading investors about the potential impact of climate change regulations on its operations started on October 22, 2019. NEW YORK - A trial in which energy giant ExxonMobil stands accused of misleading investors about the potential impact of climate change regulations on its operations started Tuesday. Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil from 2006 to 2016, during the years in question, and will testify in the trial, according to a company attorney. "For many years, ExxonMobil has acknowledged that climate change is real and is a problem that must be addressed by the nations of the world," Wells, the ExxonMobil attorney, told the court. "But the problem with climate change does not permit the New York attorney general to bring a meritless complaint."

The secret diplomacy often caught Tillerson unawares as important policy issues favored by Trump and Kushner were being decided, and created a sense of chaos within the White House to observers on the outside. Tillersons comments were contained in a transcript released Thursday of testimony he gave to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May. Trump fired Tillerson, via Twitter, on March 13, 2018, and replaced him with then-CIA Director Michael R. Pompeo. I could see the color go out of the face of the foreign secretary of Mexico. Trump also put Kushner in charge of drafting a peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians, which has yet to materialize.

MoneyWatch: Exxon CEO expects oil prices to remain low; "Blurred Lines" trial resumes Exxon Moblie CEO, Rex Tillerson says that oil production has outpaced consumption. And, in the trial over the hit song "Blurred Lines," Pharrell Williams testified that he did not copy Marvin Gaye's song. Wendy Gillette reports on the day's top MoneyWatch headlines.