Washington — President-elect Donald Trump will announce on Tuesday that he plans to nominate Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as the next US secretary of state, a person familiar with the decision said. The nomination is sure to spark a high-profile fight in the US Senate, where three Republicans and several Democrats have already expressed public misgivings about making Tillerson, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin going back about two decades, the nation’s top diplomat. Tillerson, who hits Exxon’s mandatory retirement age of 65 in March, has accepted Trump’s offer, according to another person familiar with the transition. He would be the first oil executive to lead the State Department. Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida are among those who have questioned Tillerson’s dealings with Putin. Rubio sits on the foreign relations committee, where he could join with Democrats on the panel to block Tillerson’s nomination from reaching th...
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