By: Earnest Jones | 07-19-2017 | News
Photo credit: John Poltrack | dreamstime.com

President Trump to Nominate Jon Huntsman as Us Ambassador to Russia

President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate the former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as the U.S. ambassador to Russia on Tuesday. If Huntsman is confirmed, he’ll take over a high-profile post amid ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential contacts between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.

The former 2012 GOP presidential candidate has twice served as an ambassador. He was the nation's top diplomat to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and then served in that role in China under President Barack Obama before returning to the U.S. to run for president.

He was also briefly under consideration to be Trump's secretary of state. The White House misspelled Huntsman's first name in its press release announcing Trump's intention, calling him "Governor John Huntsman Jr. of Utah" instead of Jon.

An announcement was made by the White House shortly after it confirmed that Trump had a previously undisclosed conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this month.

Huntsman is the son of a billionaire industrialist whose company Huntsman International LLC currently has a handful of businesses in Russia, including plants that make pigments and polyurethanes, the Salt Lake Tribune has reported.

Huntsman Jr. played a role in the family's early business dealings in the country shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the paper has said.

He also had an up-and-down relationship with Trump during last year's campaign. He was slow to endorse any candidate for the Republican nomination though he did back Trump once he became the presumptive nominee. But Huntsman then called for Trump to drop out after the October release of a 2005 video in which Trump was captured on a hot microphone making lewd comments about women.

He alleged that the campaign cycle had been nothing but a race to the bottom. He also called for Trump's running mate, then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, to top the GOP ticket.

Trump also went after Huntsman during his tenure as ambassador to Beijing. In a series of tweets in 2011 and 2012, the celebrity businessman called Huntsman a lightweight and weak and claimed that China did a major number on the U.S. during Huntsman tenure. However, the two managed to bury their differences during the transition period.

Source: http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article162272318.html

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