GOP senator: Trump Russia diesel deal may be illegal — SkimNews
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Senator Thom Tillis told NBC's Meet the Press that Trump's decision to ease Russian diesel sanctions 'could violate congressional law,' and warned his vote on the president's legislative priorities hinges on a reversal.
- A bipartisan letter signed by Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John Curtis, plus Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Richard Blumenthal, declared the U.S. 'should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians.'
- Trump announced after a call with Putin that Russia would provide 300,000 tonnes of diesel to the global marketplace immediately, with a further 500,000 tonnes to be delivered in November.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended the deal on Fox and Friends as necessary to relieve surging diesel prices, insisting the administration is acting 'with all the legal authorities we have.'
- Representative Don Bacon, also retiring, said Friday that 'propping up Putin's war economy is morally wrong as he uses that money to bomb cities.'
- Tillis is departing in January after declining re-election in November following Trump's threatened primary challenge in North Carolina — limiting Trump's leverage over the senator's vote.
- Critics pointed to a 2022 executive order and a law signed last month named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham barring U.S. investment in the Russian energy sector as legal grounds for blocking the deal.
- Tillis linked the price crisis to the war with Iran, telling Meet the Press: 'If President Trump wants to end the strain on energy supplies, number one, get things right in Iran... it was Vladimir Putin, not Zelenskyy, that started this war.'
Why it matters: Two retiring Republican critics Tillis and Bacon are openly defying Trump on a deal he needs congressional cooperation to execute — defections that arrive as the White House prepares a year-end funding push and as fuel-price anger threatens the November midterms. The legal objections cite a 2022 executive order and last month's Graham-named law, giving critics concrete statutes to weaponize in any legislative block.
Ask SkimNews
