Senator Ben Cardin says he will vote no on the nomination of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.
The Maryland Democrat said he believed Tillerson’s business orientation could compromise his ability to represent the United States.
He said that during the confirmation hearings the nominee prioritized narrow business interests over national security interests.
Cardin noted that Tillerson declined to characterize Russian and Syrian atrocities as war crimes or the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines as human rights violations.
Finally, the Maryland Democrat said he believed that the former ExxonMobil executive misled the committee about the company’s lobbying efforts on U.S. sanctions against state’s sponsoring terrorism and committing human rights violations.
