Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state nominee, has said the United States is “better served by being at that table” of climate change talks “than leaving that table.”

Here’s the exchange:

Senator Tom Udall: In your capacity as CEO of Exxon Mobile, you praised the Paris agreement, noting that addressing climate change, I quote “requires broad based practical solutions around the world”. Do you personally believe that the overall national interests of the United States are better served by staying in the Paris agreement if so why, and if not, why not?

Tillerson: “...I think having a seat at the table to address this issue on a global basis, it is important. It’s I think, 190 countries or thereabouts have signed on to begin to take action. I think we’re better served by being at that table than leaving that table.

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The big picture

What does the dossier which John McCain passed to FBI chief James Comey say?

It says Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years”. Moscow’s aim is “to encourage splits and divisions in the western alliance” and to upend the “ideals-based international order” set up after the second world war. Putin’s preference, according to the report, is for a return to the “Great Power” politics of the 19th century, where big states pursue their own interests.

The dossier says that Trump was offered “various sweetener business deals” by the Kremlin, but turned them down. The Kremlin also supplied Trump with “a regular flow of intelligence”, including on the Democrats and other political rivals.

Russian spies put together compromising dossiers on both Clinton and Trump, the dossier says. The Clinton one was innocuous and mostly included bugged conversations.

The Trump material, by contrast, was explosive. It includes lurid details from Trump’s visit in 2013 Moscow for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. According to the dossier, Trump stayed in the Ritz Carlton hotel, in the same suite used by Barack Obama. It says Russia’s FSB spy agency obtained compromising sexual material – kompromat – from the hotel suite. “FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him,” it says.

Is it true?

No one could quibble with the report’s section on geopolitics. It’s undoubtedly true that Putin has sought to weaken western institutions and the transatlantic alliance, plus the EU. Over the past 16 years he has sought to re-establish Russia as an indispensable global player, and to challenge what Moscow sees as unfair US hegemony.

The sex claims about Trump are ultimately unknowable and what happened inside the Ritz Carlton is a matter of speculation. Trump dismissed the report in its entirety at his press conference on Wednesday as “fake news”...

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The extraordinary but unverified documents published on Tuesday on Donald Trump’s ties with Moscow began life as a piece of opposition research, which has become as much a part of US politics as yard signs and coloured balloons.

There is a small industry of research and investigative firms in Washington, typically staffed by a mix of former journalists and security officials, adept at finding information about politicians that the politicians would rather stay hidden. The firms often do not know who exactly is hiring them; the request could come from a law firm acting on behalf of a client from one of the parties.

In this case, the request for opposition research on Donald Trump came from one of his Republican opponents in the primary campaign. The research firm then hired one of its sub-contractors who it used regularly on all things Russian: a retired western European former counter-intelligence official, with a long history of dealing with the shadow world of Moscow’s spooks and siloviki (securocrats).

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Trump is asked, can you say your campaign did not have contact with Russia? And what’s your message for Putin?

Trump:

“He shouldn’t be doing it, he won’t be doing it. Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading it than when other people have led it... we have to work something out... it’s not just Russia... 22m accounts were hacked in this country by China. And that’s because we have no defense.”

Trump is on to China “taking total advantage of us economically.”

“All countries will respect us far more, far more than they do under past administrations.”

Trump concludes. “These papers are all just a piece of the many many companies” I’m turning over to my sons, Trump says.

“And I hope at the end of eight years that I come back, otherwise if they did a bad job I’ll come back and say ‘you’re fired’.”

Trump is asked about his “Nazi Germany” tweet and about the border wall with Mexico and about his supreme court nominee timeline.

“We’re going to build a wall,” Trump says. “I don’t wanna wait. Mike Pence is leading an effort to get final approval... Mexico in some form will reimburse us... that will happen. Whether that’s a tax, or it’s a payment... it will happen.”

Trump says there’s no difference between Mexico reimbursing the US for costs to build the wall and paying upfront. He’s eager to begin construction. The payment will take care of itself, he says.

He says he loves Mexico. “I don’t blame them for what happened. I don’t blame them for taking advantage of the United States. What I say is, we shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”

On the supreme court, Trump has a list of 20, he’s met the candidates, Jim Demint was involved (Heritage foundation), “We have a great group of people.” “I will be making a decision... probably within two weeks of the 20th.”

On day one in office, “We’ll also be doing some very good signings.”

Trump says “the word is now out” that when you want to move your plant overseas and fire American workers, “not gonna happen that way anymore”.

Trump says US companies that want to sell “through what will be a very very strong border – not gonna happen. You’re going to pay a very large border tax”.

You can move from Michigan to Tennessee, from South Carolina back to Michigan – you got a lot of states at play, a lot of competition ... and I don’t care as long as it’s in the United States ...

There will be a major border tax on these companies that are leaving and getting away with murder.

Trump says his nominees “are doing very, very well.”

Now on Obamacare. What’s Trump saying about the timeline? What’s his plan?

“Finally,” Trump says.

“You’re going to be very very proud of what we put forth... Obamacare is a complete and total disaster... it’s imploding.”

Trump lapses into a well-worn criticism of the Obama health care law. “We could sit back and wait and watch and criticize, we could be a Chuck Schumer... and they would come begging to us, please we have to do something about Obamacare. We don’t want to own it.

“We’re going to be submitting as soon as our secretary is approved... a plan. It’ll be repeal and replace. It’ll be essentially simultaneously... probably the same day... complicated stuff...

“We’re gonna get healthcare taken care of in this country.”

Dillon, the lawyer, says a trust will be created by 20 January. The trust will hold cash and perhaps an index investment and “preexisting and illiquid business assets – golf clubs, resorts, hotels, royalties, real estate”.

And the management of the Trump organization goes to Don Jr and Eric, and a third Trump executive.

The management team will include an ethics adviser, Dillon says. “President-elect Trump will resign from all offices he holds” with the Trump organization, she says.

Trump has “already disposed” with all publicly traded and “easily liquidated” investments she says.

“No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of Donald Trump’s presidency,” she says.

Trump won’t talk to his sons about new domestic deals, Dillon says. Trump “will only know of a deal if he reads it in the paper or sees it on TV”.

Dillon calls the division between Trump and the Trump organization a “wall”.

“These papers are just some of the documents that I’ve signed turning over complete and total control to my sons,” Trump says, referring to his business interests.

Trump calls up a lawyer, Sheri Dillon, who describes his “massive” business “empire” which she compares to Nelson Rockefeller.

The lawyer continues: “He directed me and my colleagues... to design a structure that would ... completely isolate him from his management of the company.”

“The conflicts of interest laws simply do not apply to the president and the vice president,” she says.

“Even so, president-elect Trump wants there to be no doubt in the minds of the American public that he is completely isolating himself from his business interests.”

Trump says “I have no dealings” in Russia, “no loans, no current pending deals.”

“Over the weekend, I was offered $2bn to do a deal in Dubai” with “a friend of mine”. “Great guy.”

I turned it down. I didn’t have to turn it down, because as you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president ... Pence also has it. I don’t think he’ll need it ... I have a no conflict of interest provision as president ... I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I don’t like the way that looks but I would be able to do that if I wanted to.

On his tax returns:

I’m not releasing the tax returns because they’re under audit ... The only people that care about my tax returns is the reporters ... I won. I became president. I think you care. First of all you learn very little from tax returns.

Trump says he has always been aware of spying in hotel rooms in countries including Russia. And he warns people he travels with specifically about small cameras.

I am extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards ... I always tell them, be very careful, because ... in those rooms you have cameras in the strangest places ... You can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful or you will be watching yourself on nightly television.

“I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way,” Trump says, drawing laughter from the room.

Question time. Did Trump get the two-page summary about Russia during his intelligence briefing, and does he accept intelligence assessments that Putin hacked the DNC?

Trump: The meetings are classified. We had many witnesses in the meeting.

On the documents published by Buzzfeed, he says:

I think it’s a disgrace that information would be let out ... it’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff, it didn’t happen. It was gotten by opponents of ours ... It was a group of opponents that got together, sick people, and they got that crap together.

He adds: “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries, other people.”

“By the way, speaking of veterans,” Trump has tapped David Shulkin to lead the veteran’s administration, he says. Shulkin is under-secretary for health for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trump moves on. He says that car companies are reversing plans to set up plants overseas. He says he hopes the pharmaceutical industry, which is “getting away with murder,” will be next.

“Pharma” has a lot of lobbyists, “a lot of power,” Trump says.

Then he’s on to the F-35, the overbudget delayed fighter jet projects. Trump says he’s gotten to know “the generals” and “we’re gonna do big things.”

We’re going to have some competition and it’s going to be a beautiful thing.

Trump moves on. He says he met with Jack Ma and Bernard Arnault, and if the election did not turn out the way it did, those foreign executives would not be talking with American leaders.

“I will be the greatest jobs producer that god ever created,” Trump says. “We’re going to need certain amounts of other things, including a little bit of luck.”

He moves on. Military bands are going to play the inauguration, he says.

Here’s Trump.

He says thanks. He says he used to do news conference almost daily. “It’s good to be with you,” he says.

“We stopped giving them because we were getting a lot of inaccurate news.”

He thanks news organizations who did not publish “that nonsense” released by “maybe the intelligence agencies, who knows, maybe the intelligence agencies.”

He says if the intelligence community did release the documents, which he calls “fake news,” it would be a “tremendous blot” on their legacy.

Sean Spicer, Trump’s incoming press secretary, speaks as Trump arrives with his children Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric.

Spicer refers to the “frankly outrageous and highly irresponsible for a left-wing blog [Buzzfeed] ... to drop highly salacious ... information on the internet just days before he takes office.”

He calls Buzzfeed’s decision to publish the Russia report “a sad and pathetic attempt to get clicks”.

President-elect Trump is about to face the media for the first time since July, and the journalists crammed into the lobby of Trump Tower in Fifth Avenue, Manhattan are bracing themselves for what promises to be a feisty encounter. Trump likes to denigrate those covering him as the “crooked media”, and that was even before the incendiary events overnight.

CNN put a fuse under the press conference on Tuesday night by reporting that intelligence chiefs had informed him as well as President Obama of unsubstantiated allegations that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising information on the next US head of state. Then BuzzFeed lit the fuse by publishing the “unverified” memo on which the claims were based.

The press encounter is being held in the lobby of Trump Tower, just in front of the gold escalator down which Trump and his family came in 2015 at the launch of his unlikely bid for the White House. Now the space has been patched up into a visual feast fit for an incoming president, with a blue cloth backdrop and a row of 10 American flags in front of which the president-elect will stand at a podium.

Lest anyone is in any doubt about who is in charge here, in terms of the relationship between the real estate billionaire-turned-politician and the media, the room is painfully overcrowded. There are about 60 more journalists in the room than seats to accommodate them, producing a distinctly edgy feeling even before the great man arrives.

We break away momentarily from the Tillerson hearing to remind everyone that Trump is due to meet the press – for his first news conference in some six months – in about 20 minutes. He has (had) a way of starting these things late.

Rubio asks: Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?

“I would not use that term,” Tillerson says.

Rubio says, let me read you a description of Russian atrocities in Syria. He does and then moves on to the bombing of Chechens in Grozny.

Tillerson is staring at Rubio and blinking. Rubio is hammering him a bit, with descriptions of Putin’s war crimes, which is an interesting fix for the secretary of state nominee to find himself in, pressed in the direction of defending Putin.

Rubio: “But he’s not a war criminal?”

Tillerson: “Those are very very serious charges to make, and I would want to have much more information before reaching a conclusion.”

Tillerson says he’d want “to be fully informed about what’s happening.”

Rubio: “It should not be hard to say that Vladimir Putin’s military has committed war crimes in Aleppo. I find it discouraging your inability to cite that.”

Rubio asks Tillerson whether he accepts that Putin has had dissidents shot, poisoned and killed.

Tillerson said “it’s important in dealing with information” and “I am not willing to make conclusions with what is publicly available.”

Rubio: “None of this is classified Mr Tillerson. These people are dead.”

Rubio asks Tillerson whether he believes that reports of Russian tampering of the US election were accurate. Tillerson finds the intelligence reports persuasive in a way that the president-elect markedly does not.

Tillerson:

I’ve had not classified briefings... I did read the interagency report.. that report clearly is troubling... and indicates all the actions you described were undertaken.”

Tillerson says he can’t determine whether Putin personally directed the hacking. Pressed, Tillerson says it’s “a fair assumption” that Putin directed the hacking.

Tough question: what would you have done about Crimea and Ukraine?

Tillerson said he would have provided air surveillance of the Ukrainian-Crimea border and done more to support Ukrainian forces.

Then he describes a military showdown.

“I think what Russian leadership would have understood is a powerful response that ‘yes, you took Crimea, but that stops right here.’”

“That is the type of response that Russia expects. .. The taking of Crimea was an act of force. And so it required a proportional act, a proportional show of force.”

Do we get a follow-up question about the risks of a military showdown over Crimea? No, we do not.

Cardin asks Tillerson if Russia has a legitimate claim to Crimea.

“No sir. That was a taking of territory that was not theirs.”

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump told ABC News that Russian president Vladimir Putin was “not going to go into” Ukraine. His secretary of state nominee has just said that Russia “invaded” Ukraine.

Tillerson also makes a statement that sounds like support for US commitments to the Nato alliance in eastern Europe:

“Russia must know that we will be accountable to our commitments and those of our allies, and Russia will be held to account for its actions.”

He says that Russia “has invaded Ukraine” and that allies “are right to raise the alarm” about Russia.

“Russia today poses a danger, but it is not unpredictable in advancing its own interests,” he said.

The Trump transition Twitter account is tweeting standout lines from Tillerson’s opening statement:

Tillerson had just finished describing the Isis threat.

“When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority,” Tillerson says. “Eliminating Isis must be our foremost priority in the Middle East.”

Tillerson says he “make sure the state department does its part in recognizing” Muslims who aid the USA in its combat against designated enemies in the Middle East.

Tillerson says China has helped fight jihadist terrorism.

Tillerson digs into a rather generalist opening statement.

“American leadership must not only be renewed, it must be asserted.”

He’s interrupted by a protester. “Rex Tillerson, I reject you. My home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.” That sounds like a warning about climate change, about which Tillerson is skeptical.

Here’s a live stream of the second day of the Jeff Sessions hearings, getting under way now:

As we continue our coverage of Trump’s denial of the accuracy of pages of “sensitive information” circulated about him and his alleged secret salacious ties to Russia, we’re going to check in on the confirmation hearings of secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, which have just started. A live stream is here:

We’ll also have an eye on Day 2 of the Jeff Sessions attorney general confirmation hearings and the Elaine Chao transportation secretary hearings.

For quick context, read our coverage of Day 1 of the Sessions hearings and our guide to what to expect from the other two:

Senator John McCain has released a statement confirming that he received “sensitive information” that he passed to the FBI, as previously reported.

McCain says he was “unable to make a judgment about [the contents’] accuracy”. Here is the statement in full:

Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”

More Trump Twitter denials:

The Kremlin has ridiculed the claims it collected compromising material on Trump as unfounded and laughable, writes Alec Luhn in Moscow.

Russian state media dismissed the reports as still more unproven accusations against the country, which a report published last week by US intelligence agencies said had meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump.

“Its content was like a parody of poorly constructed kompromat,” the television channel Rossiya 24 said of the reports, using a common term for compromising material. There is a long tradition in Russia of kompromat surfacing and leading to the disgrace of political figures and opposition activists.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, called the dossier “pulp fiction”, saying the Kremlin did not have compromising material on Trump nor on Hillary Clinton, as the documents also said.

“This is an absolute canard, an absolute fabrication, and it’s complete nonsense,” Peskov said in a statement. “The Kremlin does not engage in collecting kompromat.”

Peskov said Moscow needed to “respond with the appropriate humor” to the allegations, but also called the news an “obvious attempt to harm our bilateral relations” with the United States.

“There are those who bend over backwards to ratchet up tensions and continue the witch-hunt. This is necessary so relations remain in a state of degradation.”

Donald Trump is due to hold his first news conference in nearly six months later on Wednesday.

The press conference was planned before the dossier on Trump’s alleged links with Russia was published, but it is sure to be top of the agenda, according to a curtain-raiser by the New York Times.

Atop the list of likely subjects: news that Mr. Trump was briefed last week on unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising, salacious personal information about him.

Before those reports, the timing of Mr. Trump’s planned appearance had seemed deliberate. But by speaking the day after Mr. Obama’s address, he is inviting a conspicuous contrast, betting that his freewheeling style will compare favorably with the president’s preference for restraint.

It also remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump, now just over a week away from his inauguration, will make any attempt to adjust his frequently confrontational tone with opponents and the news media. Recent history, on his Twitter account and beyond, suggests otherwise.

No other US president-elect in modern times has waited so long to go formally before the media, according to AFP.

He is expected to go before the cameras at 11:00 am (1600 GMT) at Trump Tower.

Washington’s uneasy relations with Russia will be scrutinised further at the Senate confirmation hearing - also due to take place Wednesday - of former ExxonMobil boss Rex Tillerson – Trump’s nomination for secretary of state.

Tillerson is under fire for his close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In prepared remarks distributed by the Trump transition team ahead of the hearing, Tillerson called for a “cleareyed” assessment of the United States’ relationship with Russia. “Russia today poses a danger, but it is not unpredictable in advancing its own interests,” he will say.