Democratic Rep. Castro says Tillerson should have scheduled NATO, China meetings better
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, wishes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next month.
Multiple outlets reported this week that Tillerson plans to skip a key NATO gathering, which would’ve been his first since joining Trump’s Cabinet, in order to attend an expected visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
But Tillerson reportedly plans to make time in April for meetings with Russia, raising eyebrows as questions continue to swirl about Trump associates’ ties to the Kremlin during the election. FBI Director James Comey said Monday that his agency was continuing to probe the matter as it looks into Moscow’s interference in the U.S. election.
“Those meetings can be scheduled in better ways,” Castro told Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric on Tuesday. “I don’t think the NATO meeting and the meeting with the Chinese president had to overlap.”
“To his credit,” Castro added, “I understand he met with some NATO allies perhaps a few weeks back,” at last month’s G20 conference in Bonn, Germany.
Still, he insisted, “I think that that NATO meeting coming up is really critical and he should be there.”
Castro did not, however, comment on Tillerson’s plans to visit Russia. The Texas Democrat was among the House Intelligence Committee members who questioned Comey on Monday about his Russia probe.
Castro told Couric Tuesday that he considered the FBI director’s public confirmation of an ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election significant, and he emphasized his commitment to investigating whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians.
Though Castro insisted Democrats are “not trying to relitigate the results of the election,” he said the intention of the investigation is to prevent future attempts by other countries at influencing U.S. elections by making “sure that anyone who helped the Russians is held accountable [and] prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
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