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Sen. Rand Paul will oppose Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security. He also won’t stand in the way of it.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman says he’ll allow his colleague’s confirmation to move forward despite his own issues with Mullin’s record and a highly strained relationship that was on display during a heated hearing on Wednesday.
“I think he’s unfit. I think his temperament is not suitable. I think his anger issues are a problem, yeah, and so I won’t vote for him, but I’ve promised to at least get an expeditious vote,” the Kentucky Republican told Semafor. “They’ve had to have known for weeks that I couldn’t be real happy about a guy that won’t apologize and thinks that my assault was perfectly understandable.”
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During Mullin’s confirmation hearing, Paul confronted him directly about his past criticism of Paul as a “freaking snake” and his remark that he understood why Paul was physically attacked by his neighbor in 2017. Mullin declined to apologize to Paul. It “seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us,” Mullin added.
Mullin also seemed to dig himself into a deeper hole with Paul and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., over a secret overseas trip. During the hearing, Mullin mentioned that he took an official classified trip from 2015-2016 that only four people knew about.
The senators pressed Mullin for details, accusing him of not being transparent about his classified work. Paul pushed Mullin to agree to talk about the program in a classified setting, though Mullin said that he would not be able to tell the senators most of the details since they were not cleared to hear them.
Paul agreed to discuss that matter privately with Mullin in a classified setting on Wednesday afternoon and said if that discussion went smoothly he would move forward with a committee vote to advance Mullin’s nomination on Thursday. President Donald Trump wants Mullin to replace outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem by the end of the month, but before he can be confirmed Mullin’s nomination must get approved by Paul’s committee.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a member of GOP leadership, said he’s still confident that Mullin will be confirmed, though with Paul’s “no” vote Mullin will need a Democratic supporter in the narrowly-divided panel (Paul said he expected Mullin to get at least a Democratic vote).
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has said he would support Mullin and acknowledged after the hearing that he likely controls the decisive vote. Fetterman said he has an “open mind” on Mullin and that he hadn’t heard anything that changed his mind.