Trump nominee faces mounting skepticism after bizarre story surfaces

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) was caught in a "discrepancy" in his biography on Wednesday, which left lawmakers scratching their heads. The decision was ultimately to go to a classified setting, where Mullin said he could answer their questions about his "special assignment," which he told the Senate he couldn't talk about.

Mullin's tale dates back to the Jan. 6 attack when he told C-SPAN he was able to spring into action because “I’ve been in those situations before overseas." He claimed, “I recognized that there was an issue really quick.” When asked for specifics, he refused to go into it.

More recently, Mullin described the “smell of war.”

“War is ugly, it smells bad, and if anybody’s ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happened around you and taste it and fill it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget, and it’s ugly,” he said.

Mullin has never been to war nor has he been in any kind of military service. He was a UFC wrestler. As The New Republic's Edith Olmsted noted Wednesday, it has raised questions about "stolen valor."

Ultimately, Mullin was forced into a secure setting where the senators could discuss classified matters about what Mullin said was a secret. After leaving, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who nominated Mullin officially, said that what Mullin called "classified" was actually more of a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). Mullin was never recruited by any government agency for any overseas mission.

"There’s still a lot of unanswered questions about what 'special missions' Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) was engaged in such that he could not disclose to the committee in a public setting," wrote Politico's Homeland Security reporter Eric Bazail-Eimil. Lankford, he said, made it clear the issue is not classified.

"Democrats are confused," Bazail-Eimil said. "Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said it was a 'weird' situation and said he has more questions."

"Lankford also told us the trip was related to a follow up on a whistleblower. But Mullin said earlier he received SERE training," wrote Courthouse News Congress reporter Benjamin S. Weiss. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training, according to the U.S. Air Force.

Weiss recalled that Mullin also told the Senators he would only talk to people in the classified setting with "top secret" or "SCI clearance." What he did, Lankford said, was under an NDA.

"Things look even less clear," Weiss assessed.

Mullin backed himself into a corner once Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) began questioning Mullin on which agency classified his trips. Mullin answered that the House did, but the House doesn't have that power.

NBC News reporter Melanie Zanona reported that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was in the hearing audience to support Mullin in his nomination.

She relayed that McCarthy said Mullin's claims about being approved to take a classified trip to an undisclosed location in 2016 as a House member are '100% true.'"

McCarthy further said he checked with Speaker Paul Ryan at the time and "former staff." Mullin testified that only four people in the House knew about the mystery mission.

Weiss noted that after the classified questioning, Lankford tried to dismiss the matter about the SERE training as a “mountain and molehill” situation. When pressed on it, however, Lankford's account contradicted Mullins', and he refused to go into more details discussed in the classified setting.

“If you knew more of the story, which is small, in this point, then it would make more sense, on it," said Lankford, according to Weiss.

Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney said that the discrepancy between top secret classified information and an NDA "makes a lot more sense, but raises the question of why Mullin kept describing it as some kind of classified venture."

"Whether Trump’s DHS pick gets confirmed before 3/31 could come down to whether Senate Homeland Security Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has a bone to pick with Mullin over comments Mullin made about the 2017 assault against Paul, will proceed with tomorrow’s markup as planned," said Bazail-Eimil.

The Washington Post reported ahead of the hearing that Mullin has been telling this story for at least five years. The story is one that "most laymen would assume meant he served in foreign battle," wrote the Post's congressional reporter, Paul Kane.

David J. Bier, the Cato Institute's director of immigration studies, noted that while in her role, Secretary Kristi Noem's "biggest problems were that she and her staff were habitually dishonest, deceptive, and unaccountable. If you want to see how Sen. Mullin will be exactly the same, watch this 8-second exchange: Dishonest. Evasive. No accountability."