Mullen gets rocky reception from Rand Paul at combative DHS confirmation hearing |
Mullin gets rocky reception from Rand Paul at combative DHS confirmation hearing
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) isn’t afraid of a fight, but on Wednesday, his colleagues tasked with reviewing his nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) didn’t pull any punches either, grilling the senator on everything from past comments about the “smell” of war to his clash with the panel’s chair.
Nominees plucked from the Senate often get a softer touch from their colleagues when they’re on the precipice of joining the administration, a dynamic on display when former Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was tapped for secretary of State.
Instead, Mullin’s reception was cold as ice.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had approached the hearing with an air of mystery, but he quickly dispelled any doubts about whether he holds a grudge about Mullin calling him “snake” and saying he understood why Paul’s neighbor attacked him.
Paul lit into Mullin almost as soon as he began speaking, and the first 15 minutes of the hearing were completely dominated by the beef between the two.
“You told the media that I was a ‘freaking snake’ and that you completely understood why I had been assaulted. I was shocked it would justify and celebrate this violent assault that caused me so much pain and my family so much pain,” Paul said in his opening remarks.
“I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force.”
“You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified, so today you’ll have your chance,” Paul said.
Paul’s questioning of Mullin was equally contentious, and later in the hearing, he threatened to cancel Thursday’s committee vote on the nomination if Mullin didn’t meet with senators behind closed doors.
Mullin told reporters in exiting the hearing he was “excited about that part being done.”
Paul, meanwhile, said he will not back Mullin’s nomination. He said the former mixed martial arts fighter’s penchant for violence — Mullin previously tried to fight the leader of the Teamsters during a hearing — makes him a poor example to lead immigration enforcement agencies at a time aggressive enforcement has been questioned.
That decision doesn’t necessarily sink the Oklahoma senator’s nomination, as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said he plans to support him — a pivotal vote for advancing out of the panel.
Mullin never apologized, and he asserted he had made the comments to Paul directly when the two met previously.
“As far as my terms ‘snake in the grass,’ sir, I work around this room to try to fix problems. I’ve worked with many people in this room. Seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us,” Mullin added.
“And as far as me saying that I invoke violence — I don’t think anybody should be hit by surprise. I don’t like that. But if I do have something to say, everybody in this room knows. I’ll come straight to you, I’ll say it publicly and I’ll say it privately, but I’ll never say it behind your back. So for you to say I’m a liar, sir, that’s not accurate.”
While most of the panel’s other GOP members were friendly with Mullin, Paul’s concerns were not his alone.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) aired similar worries about Mullin’s temperament.
“This is a role where temperament matters, where judgment matters and where experience matters,” he said.
“While I’m interested in hearing more about your vision for leading the department, I do have reservations about your readiness to take on such a significant role at such a critical time.”
Peters also pressed Mullin to explain various remarks implying he had been on military missions, despite not being a veteran or a member of the intelligence community.
“War is ugly. It smells bad. If anybody has ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happening around you and taste it and feel it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something you will never forget,” Mullin said earlier this month during an appearance on Fox News.
“Where did you ‘smell war,’ sir?” Peters asked.
That topic also led to an extensive back-and-forth, with Peters saying Mullin failed to be forthcoming in his confirmation paperwork.
“In 2015, I was asked to train with a very small contingency and go to a certain area. … I have spoken generally about my experiences, but I’ve never spoken specifically on details, on dates or on the mission, and that was official,” Mullin said, adding that only four or so people were involved in the trip.
Although Mullin claimed the trip was classified, Peters said he checked out that statement, suggesting it was false.
“We want to know what the supposed classified work was. We have real questions about it,” Peters said, recounting how the State Department, Pentagon and FBI told him Mullin did not show up in any classified documents.
“I don’t know how that reconciles.”
Peters pressed Mullin to accompany the panel’s members to a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to explain the details, and Paul joined in, seemingly threatening to cancel Thursday’s vote. After initially demurring, Mullin agreed.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who introduced Mullin on Wednesday, appeared to be the only GOP member of the panel to attend the SCIF meeting, telling reporters afterwards that the trip Mullin referenced was not classified, but rather covered by a nondisclosure agreement, calling the issue a “mountain out of a molehill.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), however, told Punchbowl News that the matter raises “additional questions, and all of them go to his credibility.”
The public also left with little understanding of how Mullin might be different from his predecessor, current Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Mullin did say he plans to abandon Noem’s policy of requiring the secretary to sign off on any expense of more than $100,000, a dynamic that delayed payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“That’s called micromanaging, and I don’t know if the secretary put that in or someone else did. I’m not a micromanager,” Mullin said.
He also said FEMA should be “restructured, not eliminated,” echoing the softening in tone the Trump administration has taken towards the disaster agency.
On the immigration front, Mullin said he has not been given a deportation quota and seemed to endorse the concept of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needing a judicial warrant to arrest and deport someone, rather than the DHS-issued administrative warrant the department has used in some instances.
“I have made it very clear to the staff, and I think when you and I spoke, that a judicial warrant will be used to go into houses, in a place of businesses, unless we’re pursuing someone that enters in that place,” Mullin told Blumenthal.
Mullin said he regretted his comments about Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the wake of their killings, but he stopped short of apologizing for his past remarks.
“Those words probably should have been retracted. I shouldn’t have said that. And as secretary, I wouldn’t. The investigation is ongoing, and there is, like I said, sometimes [I’m] going to make a mistake, and I own it. That one, I went out there too fast. I was responding immediately without the facts. That’s my fault. That won’t happen as secretary,” Mullin said.
Mullin previously called Pretti a “deranged individual” and defended the officer who killed Good, saying he “didn’t have an option” and had to “engage.”
But pressed by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) on how he would like to see immigration policy changed, Mullin said only that he’d like to see more cooperation with local law enforcement, where they would turn over to ICE anyone who had been removed.
To Slotkin, that answer was insufficient.
“The trust is gone, and not just with Democrats. That’s why we’re here. That’s why your predecessor was fired. And there needs to be fundamental reform of this law enforcement agency, and I think that the public writ large is crying out for that,” she said.
Mullin was also asked to address the extent he would be in charge of the department, fielding a question from Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) about whether White House aide Stephen Miller would truly be in charge.
“I believe in powering people to make decisions, but I will still be talking to the president on a regular basis, and any policy that is within my realm of authority that you guys give us,” Mullin said.
“If the president wants us to look at it, we’ll look at it, because I serve at his discretion.”
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