Mullin Aided Election-Conspiracy Theorists
Homeland-security nominee allegedly abetted a computer hack and connected conspiracy theorists to Susie Wiles
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Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), the nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), allegedly has worked with and helped conspiracy theorists who reportedly hacked overseas computers and who provided a key witness in the legal efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
The claims about Mullin’s involvement come from the right-wing conspiracy theorists and their allies. Mullin, an election denier, has boosted some of their allegations on right-wing media.
He is said to have connected these conspiracy theorists with the 2024 Trump campaign, specifically Susie Wiles, now White House chief of staff. Wiles supposedly got Elon Musk to confirm the conspiracy theories.
The connection Mullin made with the conspiracy theorists in 2024 led Pres. Donald Trump to conclude that he’d been “gaslit,” according to one right-wing commentator, into temporarily easing up on his 2020 election-theft claims.
The commentator said she spoke with the men Mullin brought to Trump, and that their election-theft claims led Trump to attack Venezuela.
Mullin also is said to have “come to the rescue” three days before the 2024 election, playing an unspecified role in enabling a cybersecurity “hit” on Dominion Voting Systems computers in Serbia.
In short, a network of conspiracy theorists and their allies allege that Mullin — and the conspiracy theorists he brought to Wiles and Trump — have:
Reignited Trump’s election-theft convictions
Facilitated an illegal computer hack in Serbia
Convinced Trump to attack Venezuela.
There’s ample reason to doubt the people making these claims. But after an email exchange on Saturday, the White House press team did not respond to my request to confirm or deny these allegations, or address other elements of the broader narrative.
If confirmed as DHS secretary, Mullin would oversee the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that advises states and local officials on security issues including election infrastructure.
Outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem raised alarms last month with her apparent overreach about a DHS role in voting and vote-counting, both of which are the purview of individual states. Trump has threatened to assert unconstitutional control of state elections for federal office.
As Democracy Docket wrote after Mullin’s nomination, he is a fervent support of voter ID and the “SAVE America” act. In 2020, Mullin supported legal attempts to overturn the presidential election results.
Mullin is publicly more circumspect in his claims than the conspiracy theorists he reportedly has helped. (Mullin’s office did not immediately respond to my request for comment.)
But Mullin has not disowned the most sweeping conspiracy theories. Instead, he has suggested that they merit further investigation, which he says is happening.
The Three Musketeers
It was Mullin who took information from the conspiracy theorists to the Trump campaign prior to the 2024 election.
That’s the claim of former CIA official Gary Berntsen, whose interactions with the administration have been reported by multiple outlets. Berntsen says it was Mullin who first got him and his team in the door with Trump’s 2024 campaign team.
Berntsen and his partner, Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil, have been bankrolled by and joined in their globe-hopping efforts by former Overstock.com Patrick Byrne. Byrne was part efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including the notorious Dec. 18, 2020, White House meeting to sell Trump on election-theft theories.
Together, Berntsen, Rodil, and Byrne call themselves The Three Musketeers.
As I’ve reported, Berntsen and Rodil claim that Venezuela stole the 2020 election, and sought to rig elections in 71 other countries. Venezuelan allies in this supposed scheme include Iran, Cuba, China, Russia, and Serbia.
Also in on it were high-ranking U.S. officials in the FBI and CIA, the Three Musketeers have said, as well as members of Congress, non-governmental organizations, George Soros, Fox News, and Newsmax.
One senior FBI official, Berntsen says, believed them, but said if they kept it up, the FBI would come after them. Go to Congress, they were told. Berntsen said on The Adam Carolla Show:
“[T]he press wouldn’t see us and Congress — even people on the far right, Freedom Caucus members — they didn’t want anything to do with us. They were intimidated. They were afraid.”
One U.S. prosecutor agreed to hear them out. Their information was relayed to the Justice Department’s Office of Public Integrity. But the Justice Department didn’t investigate their claims, it investigated them, Berntsen said.
The Introduction
Virtually the entire political, law-enforcement, and media worlds were, in Berntsen’s telling, either too corrupt or too scared to listen to him and Rodil. Except Mullin.
“The one politician in America [who] was a hero: Markwayne Mullins [sic] of Oklahoma. Of course: The guy’s a UFC [sic1] fighter. That guy took us to the campaign. He took the information to the president. Markwayne Mullins is a stud. That guy’s a, he’s a hero, and he was the one politician in America not afraid to tell the truth.”
The 2025 book “Stolen Elections,” written by a Berntsen ally, says:
Many didn’t even want to see the evidence Gary [Berntsen] and Martin [Rodil] had collected. Others who did see it dismissed it as nonsense and never called them back. The only exception was Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a true patriot, who has been steadfast in his support.
The book’s acknowledgments list Mullin as one of the “individuals who helped the whistleblowers [Berntsen and Rodil] in their investigation, or in bringing the results of their investigation to the attention of key figures in our government.”
In his remarks on the Sept. 3, 2025, Adam Carolla Show, it’s not clear precisely what time period Berntsen is talking about. But Berntsen shared a version of the story again on Nov. 21, 2025, telling Lara Logan that Mullin was the only politician not afraid to help them after they had spent years corralling Venezuelan computer engineers who would testify to the alleged scheme.
One right-wing commentator who says she’s interviewed Berntsen and Byrne offered a loose timeline late last year.
Emerald Robinson, whose work led to her ouster by Newsmax, now appears on the media outlet of Mike Lindell, one of America’s most vocal election deniers. She reported in December that Mullin was in the mix at least “a few weeks” before the 2024 election.
Saving 2024
As of Sept. 12, 2024, Mullin was publicly refusing to say that he would certify the results of the election two months away.
Then, according to Robinson, “a few weeks before” the election, “@SenMullin and former Senator David Perdue finally arranged a meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Trump advisor Susie Wiles and the one man who could explain exactly how America’s election systems are rigged.”
That was Rodil.
Until that point, Wiles had dismissed claims of election theft. After Rodil’s briefing, Robinson wrote, “she didn’t know what to think.”
So Rodil stayed at Mar-a-Lago for three days, laying out his case for Venezuelan election theft. “There was only man who Wiles trusted to confirm it all: @elonmusk.”
Musk got Rodil’s data, Robinson wrote. And then “read the AI summary.”
Musk’s conclusion: “We have a problem. It’s true.”
Rodil, Berntsen, and Byrne had socked away Venezuelan engineers, witnesses to the ostensible scheme, in Gstaad, Switzerland. From there, remotely, they began briefing Musk’s team and Trump’s.
Ultimately, they identified the IP addresses of Dominion computers in Serbia, the computers that would supposedly steal the 2024 election. But, Robinson suggests, they were stuck, helpless to do anything about it.
Enter Mullin.
With just three days to go until the election would be stolen for Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, Mullin saved the day. Robinson wrote:
That’s when @SenMullin came to the rescue again.
A cybersecurity team got the data.
3 days before the 2024 election, Dominion’s office in Serbia was hit.
Their computers were useless.
Robinson doesn’t identify the team, or the exact nature of Mullin’s role in the supposed computer hack. But the Three Musketeers whom Mullin had connected with Trump’s team weren’t done.
Back to 2020
According to Robinson, Musk’s validation of Rodil’s data vindicated Trump’s belief that the presidency was stolen from him in 2020. And pissed him off.
Trump was upset with his own staff after @elonmusk verified the fraud was real.
He’d been gaslit for 4 years by his team to drop the topic.
Robinson claimed that Trump’s inner circle had tried to keep Berntsen and Rodil out:
His own advisors had tried to keep him from meeting with the team that saved the 2024 election.
People like @BorisEP & @ChrisLaCivita had blocked the truth at every turn.
I texted LaCivita about this back in January. Referring to Robinson, LaCivita said, “No one believes this idiot.” He said he didn’t know Berntsen’s and Rodil’s names and had “zero clue in what the hell they are Talking about.”
As for the 2024 election, LaCivita said, “The team the President assembled and he led won a great victory for the American people and tactically stopped any and all attempts to steal the 24 election.” Apparently referring to Berntsen, Rodil, and Byrne, LaCivita added, “Those people had zero to do with it.”
The Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Tulsi Gabbard hasn’t responded to my request around the same time, early January, to respond to Robinson’s story.
True or not, what matters may be what Trump believes, or what serves him.
In November 2025, The Guardian reported that one U.S. attorney and a federal task force were getting briefed by Berntsen and Rodil. A month before that, national-security reporter Seth Hettena got a source to confirm that Berntsen was “part of a package of people who have spent months transferring out information and proof into government hands.”
Around the same time, I wrote about an account that during the 2020 legal battle, one of Berntsen’s associates from Fox — former anchor and now U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — had connected him and Rodil with Eric Trump, who then got Berntsen to Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.
Also, as I wrote last year, Gabbard at an April 2025 cabinet meeting parroted some aspects of Berntsen’s and Rodil’s story — just days after Rodil is said to have briefed the ODNI.
Gabbard has been tasked with investigating alleged election interference. She seems to think she’s found it.
But in July 2025, Robinson says, White House advisors told Gabbard not to include 2020 in a report on election interference. Trump wasn’t satisfied. According to Robinson:
He [Trump] wants to know if Venezuela really runs America’s elections.
Who does he finally call to brief him? Well the Three Musketeers of course.
Not the CIA or DNI.
That’s when Trump decides: it’s time to overthrow [President Nicolás] Maduro.
Trump may not care whether it’s true. Reportedly, during the Dec. 18, 2020, White House meeting, he said of Byrne and Powell and Giuliani, “[T]hese people at least want to fight for me.”
So did Berntsen and Rodil. It just didn’t come out for years what a big role they played.
On Nov. 13, 2020, with the Trump team desperate for a legal basis to prevent states from certifying the results, Powell went on television and vowed to “Release the kraken.”
The kraken turned out to be a bombshell mystery witness, his identity unknown at first. He was soon revealed to be Leamsy Salazar, a former Venezuelan military hero turned dissident.
As journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman first reported in 2024, it was Berntsen and an unnamed partner who served up Salazar to Powell and her team.
As I revealed last year, it was Rodil who got Salazar out of Venezuela in the first place. Rodil said in a court filing that Salazar was brought out specifically to carry out a political agenda against Maduro’s inner circle.
Salazar’s story was rejected almost immediately. First, and initially in secret, by Trump’s own team. Then by the courts.
That hasn’t stopped Trump’s team from taking Berntsen and Rodil seriously now.
2026 on the Line
In recent months, Trump has become more explicit in elevating election conspiracy theories, sharing them on social media, including ones tying the U.S. raid to Venezuela and Dominion.
Last month, Trump boosted a claim that Iran tried to “interfere” in the 2020 and 2024 elections. (The article itself doesn’t allege Iranian meddling with actual voting machines, but with attempting to influence voters beforehand and to kill Trump.)
Now, Trump has nominated the senator who put this all on his plate as the next DHS secretary. And if the claims about Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, China, or Russia are taken seriously, they could be used to justify the sort of illegal power grab of elections that Trump has floated and that DHS would be positioned to execute.
And Mullin endorses these election claims. On Dec. 5, 2025, Mullin told Benny Johnson:
“Venezuela has been the hub of this, and there's no doubt that they're not working alone. There's a direct relationship between China and Russia that's also involved in this, and we know that they have been trying to get involved in our elections…
“We've allowed them into our economy, and before we realized what was happening in Venezuela, we also allow those investors to be a part of some of the stuff we thought was unpenetrable, which would have been some of our election cycles and our election machines and the way we look at to it.”
Last year, I wrote about Berntsen and Rodil making a case for U.S. prosecutors to secure the testimony of former Venezuelan intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal. He pleaded guilty on drug and weapons charges last year and is now awaiting sentencing.
Carvajal sent Trump a letter in December 2025, confirming virtually everything Trump has claimed. Right-wing conspiracy theorists have jumped on that letter. And when asked about it, Mullin told Johnson:
“This is something that's being looked at very heavily. We do know that all these systems are supposed to be closed circuit, and what's happened is these systems haven't been, and any time the data can leave a machine, it can also be penetrated from outside.”
Mullin’s nomination will have to be confirmed by the Senate. Republicans are expected to support him but will need Democratic help to beat a filibuster.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has said he’ll vote for Mullin. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) reportedly said, “I’m open to it.”
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I’m an independent journalist whose reporting is made possible by reader support. As a former executive producer at MSNBC, I helped create Up w/ Chris Hayes and previously was a senior producer on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. Your paid subscription helps me keep reporting.
Mullin had some XFL bouts as a mixed martial arts fighter.
Holy crap! While we all suspected that Mullin's appointment was made for nefarious reasons, as well as the fact that Trump also apparently sees him as a stud, this cracks the whole situation wide open. Keep it up.
This is fantastic reporting. Thank you!