Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said during a Fox News interview on Friday that the Taliban held a gun to an American woman‘s head after she repeatedly tried to get to the airport in Kabul because President Joe Biden’s State Department would not help her get to the gate.
The story, which was featured on “Special Report” with anchor Bret Baier, comes after Mullin has repeatedly tried to rescue American citizens from Afghanistan.
Mullin says that he was traveling with a large sum of cash provided by private individuals that was to be used to pay “taxes” that the Taliban imposed at numerous security checkpoints throughout the country in an effort to get the American woman and her four children out of the country. Mullin says that he was shut down by the Biden administration.
Mullin said that the Biden administration told the American people a “boldface” face lie about how all Americans who wanted to get out of Afghanistan could get out of Afghanistan and that he personally knew of approximately 50 Americans that want to get out who are still stranded there.
“Do you know why all those other governments were going out and picking up their individuals and bringing them back in?” Mullin asked Baier. “Because there was three Taliban checkpoints before you could get to [Hamid Karzai International Airport] HKIA. And all three of them would charge you a tax and the tax was anywhere between $500 to $4,000.”
“This one young lady and her four kids, to which I have recordings of, we were recording as we were walking through because I was on the phone with the State Department for 12 hours, trying to get someone from the State Department to come out of the gate to get her, for 12 hours. Twelve hours,” he said. “I have it recorded, couldn’t get anybody to come out. She had come through there, it cost her $2,000. They kept, the State Department kept saying hey, go up and talk to him. Tell them they’re waiting on us. Tell him, give him your name, they know you’re coming.”
“Five times she approached this guard with the Taliban,” he continued. “The last time they stuck a pistol to her head with her kids there, I have it recorded with her kids screaming and crying. She goes back and she’s crying so hard that she begins to puke, the mother did, and the State Department sent her up there five times saying we got clearance for her. And here we are, the United States government, and we’re negotiating with the Taliban to get American citizens out? And then the president of the United States is going to go to the mic and say that every American that wanted out got out? I have a list of 50 that want out, that they haven’t got out. I have a list of 50 that we’ve ran out of Kabul and put in safe houses around Afghanistan, that I promise you, they wanted out.”
Mullin later added that “some” Americans who are trapped there are going to die “because of the failure from President Biden.”
“I promise you that,” he added. “At some point, they’re gonna lose patience and they aren’t going to keep letting us drive past these checkpoints and paying them off. Sorry, taxes. That’s what they call a tax. And when I say that blood is on his hands, that means President Biden’s hands, I mean that with everything in my heart, it’s his fault. I wouldn’t have been over there. I wouldn’t even [think] about going, if it wasn’t for his failure.”
WATCH:
TRANSCRIPT:
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS HOST: Mike, thank you. Joining us now Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin, from Oklahoma, just had an interesting trip overseas, got a lot of attention. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Let’s start at the beginning.
REP. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): Right.
BAIER: How does this start?
MULLIN: Well, I want to make it very clear, I wasn’t looking to try to get in Afghanistan, that wasn’t what this thing started out to be. What started was, people started calling me wanting help. And we’d been getting friends of mine that was in the service that said, can you help our interpreter get out, which we had a lot of conversations about that. Then we started getting phone calls from people that had family members or friends that were AMCITS or Americans, American citizens, AMCITS for short, to get them out, and I said let me make a phone call. And it came out that they needed a State Department or a government entity to sponsor their fight going in. That’s the only way they could get in. And no one would sponsor the fight, even though it was designated to get these 20 Americans out. And so they called me back and said, would you be interested in sponsoring the flight? And I said, I mean, what do you mean financially? And they said, no, a congressman can sponsor a flight going in. And it gives one of these other departments cover because, it’s kind of, no one wants to touch it because I personally believe, right, it was because they knew this was a hot mess. And so that’s what we, that’s how this whole thing started.
BAIER: So, you don’t actually get into Afghanistan to get people out?
MULLIN: As this thing moved forward, is they wanted, everybody kept denying them and then they asked, would you go with us? And these are tier one operators, these are Delta guys, Special Forces. These guys are legit. I’m nobody. I’m, I’m just a congressman.
BAIER: Well, you’re a congressman from Oklahoma, you’re a businessman.
MULLIN: Sure.
BAIER: Mixed martial arts background, but no military–
MULLIN: But that doesn’t, no, that doesn’t well in this. I wasn’t trying to go over there and be a cowboy or anything like that. It was just, what else you do, when you see a problem, how do you say no, if you can be an asset? And they believe I could be an asset. We got a humanitarian flight plan from FAA. And everything was good to go. We left. We left the United States, we had a time of arrival at HKIA, in Kabul, HKIA is the airport there in Kabul. And we got there and we’re drawing an approach and they canceled our PPR. And so we circled the airport, probably for an hour, and we had five PPRs canceled, every time they’d cancel, the agency that would that was trying to get us in would give us a new one. They actually went into the tower to say let them land. We were on the phone with them texting, we couldn’t talk. We were texting back and forth. And they kept issues, new ones. And they would never let us in Afghanistan. And I’ll tell you this, too. Unfortunately, one of our American citizens, her two year old son, and I believe it was her father, to which I all have passports on, we lost contact of, because they were at the Abbey Gate. And a few hours later, the Abby Gate blew up. And we haven’t had any contact with them since and I believe it’s because they were caught up in that. And so what they did by playing politics on this, for whatever reason–
BAIER: So, you don’t know who shut you down from landing?
MULLIN: I don’t know what, I don’t know who shut us down, but I think it was 100% directed from the State Department.
BAIER: At some point you go on to Tajikistan.
MULLIN: No, I never went to Tajikistan.
BAIER: Didn’t go in?
MULLIN: No, that is absolutely, absolutely false. We we did work around the region, but Tajikistan was, unfortunately, the ambassador, Pommersheim, was not helpful at all. And a lot of misinformation was going out about that.
BAIER: And for the storyline that said that you possibly interrupted some covert thing that was going on or some operation in Tajikistan?
MULLIN: No, I don’t, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. This is what the ambassador Pommersheim told me. He says it’s very sensitive right now, Markwayne, it’s very sensitive because Putin and the Chinese government is going to be here September 5th, it’s very sensitive. I said, I get it’s very sensitive. I don’t need any of your assets. I don’t need anything. I first of all was making you aware that we’re coming in. But I also and I also made the point, I said, but we are coming in with a large sum of cash. Why are you coming with a large sum of cash? Sir, you do know that we got to go through 16 checkpoints just to get from Kabul to Mazar, each one of those charge someone to come through. I don’t know what the requirements are for, what are the requirements to bring in this cash. And he says I can’t assist you. I can’t help you. Why? I was told not to. You were told not to help an American citizen. You were told by the federal government in Washington, D.C., not to help? When we’re not trying to smuggle anybody over. We’re trying to do a job that President Biden wouldn’t do.
BAIER: You know, a lot of people look at what you’re trying to do as admirable. You had House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy saying he really didn’t want members doing this on your own because one they could become hostages, two, they could become problems that the military would have to deal with.
MULLIN: Sure.
BAIER: Do you think about that, whether that was worth it?
MULLIN: I did. But how do you say no? I mean, how do you say no, when you have the opportunity to do something? Believe me, my wife wasn’t happy about me going.
BAIER: Yeah, I’m sure.
MULLIN: My kids weren’t happy about me going and to be quite frank with you, all of us that was on that plane, we felt like we had probably had a 50/50 chance of coming back.
BAIER: Why should we not think that this was, you know, bravado, or testosterone, or an effort to get the spotlight?
MULLIN: I understand that.
BAIER: Like, how do you respond to that?
MULLIN: Well, I’m not Rambo.
BAIER: Yeah.
MULLIN: I never pretended to be Rambo. We were surrounded by great people, of all the guys that I was working with, I’m that low man on the totem pole. And I understood that. But they felt like I could be an assistance to them. How? Logistically maybe, open the doors for them, making phone calls. And being able to take in the SIVs or the AMCITS as they came onto the plane. And that was the plan. That plan changed, and it changed when we wasn’t allowed to get into Afghanistan. We quickly realized that the President and the State Department, and General Milley, General McKenzie, were lying to the American people by saying everybody that wanted out could get out. That’s a lie. That is a boldface, 100% lie, because we were working with these individuals.
BAIER: And you know today that there are just a bunch of them still stuck there.
MULLIN: Right now as we speak, right before we started talking, I called the guys that are still over there. And they said there was five planes sitting at Mazar, Mazar-i-Sharif, AMCITS, SIVs, and refugees on it–
BAIER: American citizens, special immigrant visas–
MULLIN: and refugees. … And they may be P-1, P-2s, which are levels of refugees that we can get out. But they can’t get clearance to get out because no country is willing to help. We called the State Department about this, the State Department said we’re not in control of the airspace, we’re not handling that. Well, it’s our mess. I don’t care which way you think about it. It’s our mess. The United States created this vacuum to allow the Taliban to come in, President Biden and his horrific withdraw, has caused this to happen.
BAIER: Do you have any regrets about what you did?
MULLIN: Absolutely not. I’d do it again tomorrow. We were saving people’s lives.
BAIER: What if 535 members decided to, you know, get on a plane and go?
MULLIN: Everybody’s helping right now, I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat, everybody’s helping. I’ve heard from a lot of different members that are trying to do their their thing. Everybody has a different way of helping. Do you know why all those other governments were going out and picking up their individuals and bringing them back in? Because there was three Taliban checkpoints before you could get to HKIA. And all three of them would charge you a tax and the tax was anywhere between $500 to $4,000. This one young lady and her four kids, to which I have recordings of, we were recording as we were walking through because I was on the phone with the State Department for 12 hours, trying to get someone from the State Department to come out of the gate to get her, for 12 hours. 12 hours. I have it recorded, couldn’t get anybody to come out. She had come through there, it cost her $2,000. They kept, the State Department kept saying hey, go up and talk to him. Tell them they’re waiting on us. Tell him, give him your name, they know you’re coming. Five times she approached this guard with the Taliban. The last time they stuck a pistol to her head with her kids there, I have it recorded with her kids screaming and crying. She goes back and she’s crying so hard that she begins to puke, the mother did, and the State Department sent her up there five times saying we got clearance for her. And here we are, the United States government, and we’re negotiating with the Taliban to get American citizens out? And then the president of the United States is going to go to the mic and say that every American that wanted out got out? I have a list of 50 that want out, that they haven’t got out. I have a list of 50 that we’ve ran out of Kabul and put in safe houses around Afghanistan, that I promise you, they wanted out.
BAIER: Do you think we’re going to get these people out?
MULLIN: We’re gonna get some, but there’s gonna be some that’s gonna die because of the failure from President Biden. I promise you that. At some point, they’re gonna lose patience and they aren’t going to keep letting us drive past these checkpoints and paying them off. Sorry, taxes. That’s what they call a tax. And when I say that blood is on his hands, that means the President Biden’s hands, I mean that with everything in my heart, it’s his fault. I wouldn’t have been over there. I wouldn’t even thought about going, if it wasn’t for his failure. I wouldn’t have put I wouldn’t have put my life in danger. I wouldn’t have put my kids and my wife through that. I wouldn’t have put anybody through it.
BAIER: And you would do it again?
MULLIN: Without even hesitation.
BAIER: Well, Congressman, we appreciate your time. I know you just traveled back and the story’s compelling.
MULLIN: Thank you, sir.
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