trump and tillerson violate Russia sanctions and Congress claps

"President Trump is exempting Citgo Petroleum Corp., owned by Venezuela’s government, from the financial sanctions imposed Friday on the country.

The latest set of sanctions is meant to punish the government of President Nicolás Maduro as it moves to rewrite the country’s constitution and consolidate his power. To that end, the sanctions seek to exclude the Venezuelan government from the United States’ economy, including its markets and capital, and to make sure the U.S. does not assist the Maduro government.

But Citgo, an oil refiner, retailer and transporter based in the United States and owned by the government’s Petróleos de Venezuela, will get to operate largely as normal."
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/world/americas/venezuela-citgo-oil-arrests-corruption.html?_r=0

 "Venezuelan authorities arrested the acting president of its U.S.-based refiner Citgo and five of the subsidiary’s top executives on Tuesday as part of a spiraling corruption purge in the OPEC country’s oil industry."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil/venezuela-arrests-head-of-u-s-refiner-citgo-in-graft-sweep-idUSKBN1DL1WL
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" Exxon Mobil Corp sued the U.S. government on Thursday, blasting as “unlawful” and “capricious” a $2 million fine levied against it for a three-year-old oil joint venture with Russia’s Rosneft.


The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday morning slapped the world’s largest publicly traded oil producer with the fine for “reckless disregard” of U.S. sanctions in dealings with Russia in 2014 when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was Exxon’s chief executive.

The lawsuit and the Treasury’s unusually detailed statement on Exxon’s conduct represented an extraordinary confrontation between a major American company and the U.S. government, made all the more striking because Exxon’s former CEO is now in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

Exxon took the government to court despite the fact that the fine, the maximum allowed, would have a minor impact on the company, which made $7.84 billion in profit last year."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-usa-ukraine/exxon-sues-u-s-over-fine-levied-for-russia-deal-under-tillerson-idUSKBN1A51UHhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-mobil-usa-ukraine/exxon-sues-u-s-over-fine-levied-for-russia-deal-under-tillerson-idUSKBN1A51UH