‘Going to be practical’: Sen. Markwayne Mullin speaks out after being named Noem’s replacement at DHS
U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) speaks to members of the media as the Trump Cabinet briefs members of Congress on Iran at the U.S. Capitol on March 3, 2026, in Washington, DC. Trump administration Cabinet officials will be briefing all lawmakers in the House and Senate on U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The spotlight is now on Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin as the Oklahoma lawmaker is poised to take over the Department of Homeland Security following Kristi Noem’s controversial tenure and firing Thursday.
Mullin, 48, has no law enforcement experience but has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration and law enforcement.
Mullin told ABC News’ Rachel Scott and other reporters shortly after the news broke that he was completely caught off guard when Trump called him about the announcement and hadn’t yet talked to his wife.
“I am super excited about this opportunity,” he said.
“My focus is to keep the homeland secure,” he added.
Mullin will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
He said he is ready to “try to earn everybody’s vote,” including those of Democrats.
“If they have real concerns I’m going to listen to it, I’m going to be practical,” he said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears on ABC News’ “This Week” on April 26, 2026. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that “the system worked” and kept President Donald Trump and other leaders safe from a shooting outside of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday night that they were attending.
“The system worked; law enforcement and the Secret Service protected all of us. The man barely got past the perimeter. And so when you have a perimeter designed to keep people safe, like President Trump, and it works — that’s something that should be applauded,” Blanche told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos when asked about the fact that the president and many members of the presidential line of succession were there.
“Secondly, as President Trump said, we are not going to stop doing what we’re doing. We’re not going to stop living; we’re not going to stop being out there,” Blanche added. “President Trump is going to continue communicating with the American people in public, and the fact that the vice president and other leadership were there last night in one room, is why we had such a robust security [operation] surrounding the place, inside the place, and it’s why we are all safe.”
Blanche spoke to Stephanopoulos the morning after a shooting incident outside the dinner.
The incident took place near the main magnetometer screening area at the event, according to the Secret Service. A suspect, whom law enforcement sources identified to ABC News as Cole Allen of Torrance, California, is in custody, officials said.
Blanche said the suspect was likely acting alone, although investigations are ongoing, and that “we believe that he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then Chicago to Washington, D.C.”
Asked by Stephanopoulos how the suspect may have gotten a firearm into the hotel, Blanche replied, “It’s a good question. And listen, I’m not sure. It appears that he checked in on the 24th [of April] to the hotel, and we’re still looking at video surveillance and footage of where he walked and how he got in and how those firearms got in, but at the end of the day, I expect we’ll have a lot more about that in the coming days.”
Carolina Amesty and her attorney, Brad Bondi, arrive at the federal court in downtown Orlando, Fla., Feb. 18, 2025. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Two congressional Democrats are calling on the Justice Department’s internal watchdog to launch a probe into what they characterized as a “troubling pattern” of favorable outcomes for clients who hired defense attorney Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, for representation in cases involving the Justice Department.
The lawmakers, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., penned a letter Wednesday asking the DOJ’s inspector general to review “whether Attorney General Pamela Bondi properly recused herself from, or otherwise improperly influenced, several cases involving defendants represented by her brother.”
“We are concerned that DOJ officials, including the Attorney General, may have failed to ensure the independence of internal accountability mechanisms,” the lawmakers wrote.
Brad Bondi, a defense lawyer with the firm Paul Hastings, has secured several voluntary dismissals and settlements since his sister took the helm at the DOJ. In a LinkedIn post cited in the Democrats’ letter, Brad Bondi promoted a litany of “remarkable victories” on behalf of clients in 2025.
As ABC News previously reported, Brad Bondi successfully persuaded federal prosecutors to drop charges against Carolina Amesty, a former Florida state legislator, who faced two counts of theft of government property related to COVID relief fraud.
Weeks later, the Justice Department abruptly withdrew its case against another of Brad Bondi’s clients: Sid Chakraverty, a property developer who faced felony wire fraud charges in Missouri.
Amesty and Chakraverty denied any wrongdoing with respect to their cases at the time.
The DOJ told ABC News at the time that Attorney General Bondi had “no role” in either case, and that the decisions to drop those charges were “made through proper channels.”
Most recently, Brad Bondi was retained by an individual negotiating a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over civil fraud charges brought last September.
SEC regulators accused Brad Bondi’s client, Alexander Mehr, and another person of running a Ponzi scheme — misleading investors to the tune of more than $112 million as part of a plan to turn well-known retailers, including Pier 1 Imports and RadioShack, into thriving e-commerce businesses. The SEC also accused the two men of using more than $16 million in investor funds for personal use.
In October 2025, the SEC paused the case citing the government shutdown and noted ongoing settlement talks. Regulators said as recently as last month that the parties remain engaged in settlement negotiations. Neither Mehr nor the other defendant have publicly commented on the case.
DOJ spokesman Gates McGavick reiterated in a statement to ABC News on Wednesday, “These decisions were made through the proper channels, and the Attorney General had no role in them.”
A representative for Brad Bondi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Justin Sun, founder of Tron, during the Token2049 conference in Singapore on Oct. 2, 2025. (Photo by Suhaimi Abdullah/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A cryptocurrency mogul who has invested tens of millions of dollars in various enterprises tied to President Donald Trump and his family filed suit against the Trump family’s flagship crypto venture late Tuesday for, among other claims, alleged breach of contract and fraud — a major escalation of a feud that erupted on social media earlier this month.
Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire who has cultivated deep ties to the Trumps, filed the lawsuit late Tuesday in a California federal court, accusing World Liberty Financial of freezing his investment in the firm’s digital tokens in a bid to “ratchet up pressure” on Sun to promote another one of the company’s offerings.
Sun “has long been (and remains) an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family” and has invested roughly $45 million in World Liberty Financial at least in part “because of the Trump family’s association with the project,” Sun’s lawyers wrote.
But Sun’s lawsuit accused other World Liberty “operators” of “engaging in an illegal scheme to seize property … [causing] Mr. Sun and his companies to incur hundreds of millions of dollars in damages,” his lawyers wrote.
A World Liberty Financial spokesperson directed ABC News to posts on X from Eric Trump, who called the suit “ridiculous,” and World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff called the claims in the suit “entirely meritless.”
“World Liberty looks forward to getting the case thrown out promptly,” Zach Witkoff wrote.
Eric Trump, the son of President Trump, and Zach Witkoff, the son of the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial in 2024, shortly before Donald Trump’s election.
Sun gained notoriety in part for his purchase of a $6 million banana art piece — an actual piece of fruit duct-taped to a wall — and has since invested in both World Liberty Financial and the president’s meme coin, called $TRUMP. He attended a gala last year for the top investors in the meme coin and currently sits atop the leaderboard for a luncheon scheduled for this weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Earlier this year, Sun agreed to pay $10 million to resolve a civil fraud case brought by the Biden-era Securities and Exchange Commission.
In his lawsuit filed Tuesday, Sun accused executives at World Liberty Financial — excluding members of the Trump family — of using the firm “as a golden opportunity to leverage the Trump brand to profit through fraud.”
He accused the firm of seizing his coins as leverage to persuade Sun to promote World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, called USD1, and “mint” it on his own platform, called TRON — a strategy he called “a pressure tactic that itself qualifies as criminal extortion.”
Sun first raised these concerns on social media earlier this month. World Liberty Financial at the time denied the allegations and added in a post on X, “See you in court pal.”
