Questions for Markwayne Mullin

What we need to hear -- but probably won't -- from Trump's nominee to replace Kristi Noem

Sen. Markwayne Mullin. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.

Kristi Noem has been the worst head of Homeland Security in the department’s 20-year history, and it really isn’t even close. Her tenure was marked by reckless abuse of power, brazen lying and disinformation, white supremacist propaganda, and shameless corruption. Prior to Noem, we had never seen a cabinet official shoot a propaganda/weird fetish video from a foreign prison known for torture and abuse. Prior to Noem, we’d never seen a major government agency celebrate violence against U.S. citizens and residents. We’d never seen a cabinet official celebrate the illegal killing of unarmed U.S. citizens. And it had been at least a long while since we’d seen a government agency use openly white supremacist rhetoric.

It speaks volumes that while Noem is easily the worst DHS secretary in U.S. history, she may not even be the worst member of Donald Trump’s cabinet. Depending on whether you’re accounting for corruption, incompetence, national embarrassment, abuse of power, or general ruin, you could make a persuasive argument that Pete Hegseth, RFK, Jr., Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, Russell Vought, Tulsi Gabbard, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer are just as deserving of the title. (Stephen Miller fails to make this list only because he’s not a member of the cabinet, though he’s more powerful than any of them.)

It’s also notable that DHS was always a ridiculous agency that was created in the midst of an (understandable) national panic after an traumatic attack. It never made much sense that after a catastrophic bureaucratic failure led to the national security lapse in national security in modern U.S. history, Congress responded by creating another massive bureaucracy. That someone as incompetent and buffoonish as Noem would one day take the helm seemed inevitable.

Trump’s nominee to replace Noem is Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a mixed-martial-arts fighter turned plumber turned politician. Mullin is probably best known for challenging a witness at an oversight hearing to a fight, jamming his fingers into the nostrils of sleeping colleagues and their spouses, and projecting so much masculinity that he requires the names of two men.

A DHS confirmation presents a good opportunity to assess just how far into the abyss we’ve fallen over the last year. And after compiling the questions below for Mullin, it’s clear that we’ve fallen pretty damned far. Some of these questions are absolutely bonkers. It’s surreal to even be posing them. We seem to have arrived at the curious but perilous point in our democratic devolution in which questions like these need to be asked, but we’re not so far along that we’re no longer allowed to ask them. That’s something, I guess.

By the time I finished my questions, there were too many for a single post. So here is part one of two. The second part will focus on immigration.

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— You have no law enforcement experience. You have no military experience. You have no national security background, and no experience in emergency response or intelligence. You haven’t even served on a Homeland Security committee during your time in Congress. Are you qualified to lead DHS?

— You voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Do you still believe that Donald Trump won that election?

— President Trump tried to order DHS officials to seize voting machines after he lost in 2020. He was rebuffed by DHS leadership. Do you think they were right to refuse? If Trump orders you to seize voting machines after the midterms this year, will you do it? If he orders it, would you defy a court order prohibiting you from seizing voting machines or ballots?

— Trump has ordered criminal investigations into former DHS officials Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, in part because of their refusal to go along with his plans to overturn the 2020 election. Do you support those investigations? Do you think Taylor and Krebs committed treason, as Trump has suggested?

— You witnessed the fatal Capitol Police shooting of Ashley Babbitt during the January 6th riots. You called the officer who shot Babbitt a “hero,” and praised him for saving lives that day.

Donald Trump has called that same officer a “thug,” a “coward,” and a “murderer.” How can you work for someone who is spreading lies about an incident that you saw with your own eyes? Does President Trump’s description of Babbitt’s death make you wonder if he might, possibly, be misleading the public about other things?

— You have touted (at length!) your own efforts to protect the Capitol and your colleagues on January 6. You’ve described the “broken noses, busted-up faces, broken arms, busted heads” of Capitol Police and added, “There’s no question it was a riot. I saw it with my own eyes.” President Trump declared Babbitt a hero and a patriot. He pardoned all the January 6th rioters, and has called them patriots, freedom fighters, and “political prisoners.” He has denigrated the Capitol Police officers, and his supporters have called them cowards, traitors, and “whiners.”

So it’s worth asking again: How can you work for someone who is spreading lies about an incident that you saw with your own eyes?

— What will you do if, as with Babbitt and January 6 more generally, you encounter an incident in which the president and White House push a public narrative that you know to be false?

— As head of DHS, you’d be working closely with FBI director Kash Patel, who has raised money for the January 6 rioters. Patel also produced the single of the “January 6” rioters singing the national anthem in the background as Donald Trump recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Trump has played the song at his rallies.

Do you support Patel firing the FBI agents who prosecuted the January 6 cases? Do you support Trump playing that song Patel produced at his rallies? Would you speak at a rally where they played the song? Would you sing along?

— If Trump orders you to send ICE or Border Patrol agents to polling locations in November, will you follow that order? If Trump orders you to do so in defiance of a federal court order, would you defy Trump or the court?

— Are there any circumstances in which you’d defy a federal court if Trump asked you to do so?

— In its recruiting materials, promotional materials, and social media accounts, DHS has been making unambiguous references to white supremacist books, art, memes, and other cultural messaging. They’ve also used Nazi iconography. Is this appropriate? Will the agency continue with this sort of messaging under your leadership?

— As head of DHS, you’ll oversee a huge swath of federal grants earmarked ffor a wide range of projects and services, from national security to anti-gang and anti-drug efforts to natural disasters. It’s been widely reported that this administration has been punishing states that didn’t vote for the president by withholding all sorts of funding. In fact, the president has boasted about withholding funding for election results he doesn’t like. Do you support tying federal funding to election outcomes? Should a future Democratic president have the power to withhold, say, emergency relief the next time tornados hit Oklahoma solely because Oklahoma didn’t support that president in the previous election?

— Trump also recently withheld transportation and science funding to Colorado because Gov. Jared Polis refused to grand clemency to a Trump supporter who was convicted of tampering with election equipment. Does the president has the power to withhold funding for that reason? If Trump ordered you to withhold, say, natural disaster funding because a state refused to release a Trump ally who had been jailed after a trial and conviction, would you follow that order?

— In the oversight hearings that prompted her resignation, your predecessor Kristi Noem was asked about a $220 million no-bid public relations contract that went to a firm owned by the husband of her communications director, and that has ties to Corey Lewandowski, with whom she was allegedly having an affair. Will you investigate that contract? Will you investigate the numerous other allegations of corruption against Noem?

— Within hours Renee Good’s death, you echoed your predecessor’s claim that Good and those like her are “domestic terrorists.” Do you stand by that statement? What’s your evidence that Good was a terrorist?

— In the days after Good’s death, DOJ second-in-command Todd Blanche said an investigation of her killing was unnecessary. Do you agree with him? Do you think it’s appropriate to preemptively declare there will be no investigation after a federal law enforcement officer kills a U.S. citizen?

— If you do think such incidents should be investigated, who should do it? The FBI? DOJ? DHS?

— Do states have the right and the power to conduct their own investigations when federal law enforcement officers kill one or more of their citizens? Should the federal government cooperate with those investigations? Should it share evidence with state officials?

— After Alex Pretti was killed, you said on Fox News, “A deranged individual who came in to cause massive damage with a loaded pistol was shot and killed.”

Do you stand by that statement? What evidence do you have that Pretti was “deranged” or “came in to cause massive damage?”

— Do you agree with statements from the administration you’re hoping to work for that because Pretti was legally carrying a handgun at the time of his death, he was a threat to federal officers, and that therefore his killing was justified?

— Kristi Noem refused to apologize to the families of Renee Good or Alex Pretti for what she said after their deaths. Will you apologize to the families for what you said?

— Do you believe that the First Amendment protects the right to protest immigration officers? Does it protect the right to record them? To track them? To alert others to their presence?

— Do you believe that protesting, recording, or even insulting ICE or Border Patrol agents is “domestic terrorism,” as you, Stephen Miller, your predecessor, and President Trump have claimed?

— Since Trump’s second inauguration, DHS agents have now shot and killed four people people while on duty, three of whom were American citizens. In all four cases, the official DHS account of the incident has been directly contradicted by video and witness accounts. The government lied.

In at least four other incidents in which agents shot and wounded someone but didn’t kill them, the DHS account has also been directly contradicted by video, witnesses, and other evidence. So they lied in those cases too. DHS has also been shown to have lied about incidents in which agents claimed someone rammed their vehicle. In many cases, video showed that the DHS agents did the ramming.

In nearly all of these incidents, the government lies were brazen, wildly exaggerated, and easily disproven. And these lies were to obscure one of the most consequential and profound powers we give to the government — the power to use lethal force. The lies have been so ridiculous, in fact, that they seem to be a projection of power in and of themselves — this administration wants us to know that it’s lying, and that there’s nothing we can do about it.

First, let’s just get this out of the way: Do you agree that DHS lied in some or most of all of these cases? Do you agree that the DHS narratives after these lethal force incidents has been contracted by video, witnesses, and other evidence?

Second, given these lies, why should the public believe anything DHS says about any similar incident going forward? Do you feel any responsibility for helping to disseminate those lies?

Third, why would you want to work for an administration that lies so easily and recklessly after killing its own citizens?

Finally, how do you plan to restore public trust in DHS?

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