Rep. Mullin Defends Afghanistan Rescue Effort: 'It Wasn’t Just Me Trying To Be A Cowboy'

Oklahoma Congressman Markwayne Mullin defends his recently publicized efforts to help fly American citizens and Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders out of Afghanistan, saying that he was only “doing the job they weren’t doing,” referring to the Biden administration.

In an interview Wednesday morning, Rep. Mullin, (R) OK-2, said he was not looking for publicity when he agreed to work with two nonprofit groups that he says were intent on making sure no Americans were left behind in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

“I was working with real professionals,” Mullin said, “it wasn’t just me trying to be a cowboy or people trying to say I’m being Rambo or something that wasn’t the case, Alex, I was by far the low man on the totem pole.”

Mullin described two situations where he says he and his colleagues – ex-military, primarily – “had all the proper paperwork” but at the eleventh hour were prevented from completing their private rescue mission.

“And it was nothing but just politics,” Mullin said.

A report in the Washington Post last week cited unnamed State Department sources in claiming that Mullin threatened the U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan, John Mark Pommersheim when the ambassador declined to give Mullin permission to bring a large amount of cash into the country, which his group purportedly intended to use to hire a helicopter to rescue an American mother and her four children.

In our interview, Rep. Mullin said Ambassador Pommersheim had at first seemed willing to assist, but then abruptly changed his tone, telling Mullin that he had been instructed ‘by D.C.’ not to help in any way.

“And I said, ‘Sir, who told you in D.C. you can’t help us?’ He said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’ I said you were told by somebody…who told you that you can’t assist us?’ And he goes, ‘I can’t tell you.’ And I said, ‘Sir, you can either tell me now, so I can make a phone call to them, or the next time you hear for me it’ll be in a different capacity.’ And what I meant by that,” Mullin explained, “is the next time we’re going to have a hearing on this, and we’re going to have a hearing on this because there’s going to be congressional oversight and then I will be in an official capacity because I’m going to eventually find out who it is.”

The State Department has not yet responded to a request for comment on Mullin’s allegations.

Mullin’s attempts to get into Afghanistan flew in the face of State Department warnings discouraging Americans from traveling to the country. Two of Mullin’s House colleagues, Reps. Seth Moulton, (D-MA), and Peter Meijer, (R-MI), faced harsh criticism after making an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan to see the frantic evacuation operation for themselves.

Pentagon and State Department officials characterized the trip as a public relations stunt that only served to divert critical resources from the priority mission.