WASHINGTON – Rex W. Tillerson on Jan. 11 told a Senate committee weighing his nomination as secretary of state that he would push back hard against President Vladimir V. Putin’s effort to expand Russian influence from Ukraine to Syria to cyberspace. But in a rocky all-day hearing, Mr. Tillerson also found himself on the defensive when it came to Exxon Mobil’s lobbying activities and his reluctance to declare that some dictators were violators of human rights.
One especially skeptical Republican was Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, whose vote on the Foreign Relations Committee might well decide the fate of Mr. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon.
