After months of infighting over the Department of Homeland’s handling of ICE’s immigration crackdown, President Trump announced Thursday that he will replace Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the senior senator from Oklahoma.
“The president and I are good friends,” Mullin told reporters after the announcement. “We look forward to working more closely with the White House.”
“Obviously, I’m going to be there a lot.”
The senator, who served 10 years in the House before beginning his Senate term in 2023, is best known for getting into a fistfight with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien during a heated hearing in 2023. There are many differences between them. Mullin criticized O’Brien’s annual salary of $200,000, while Congress’s annual salary is $174,000.
Mullin was criticized for claiming at the same hearing that he only paid himself $50,000 to run his plumbing business. However, his financial disclosures from 2012, the year he was first elected to Congress, tell a different story: His self-reported salary was $92,000, nearly twice what he said he made.
A deeper look into Mullin’s most recent financial disclosures from 2024 reveals the senator is a multi-millionaire.
What are Mullin’s assets?
Members of Congress do not have to disclose the exact dollar value of their assets and liabilities but can instead give a range of values. They also do not have to disclose the value of their personal residences. Therefore, it is quite difficult to get the true value of what we represent.
Mullin’s only source of income is his congressional salary, although he owns multiple businesses, a home services company and properties in his home state and Washington, D.C.
He and his wife, Christie, have owned Mullin Plumbing in Broken Arrow, Okla., for 28 years, which his Senate website says is the largest service company in the area. He is also a co-owner of Mullin Ranch LLC, a 1,600-acre cattle ranch and event and wedding venue in Oklahoma estimated to be worth between $1 million and $5 million, documents show.
According to him, in 2024, his wife sold Rowan’s Restaurant, a steakhouse in Stilwell, Oklahoma, for $1 million to $5 million. His resume says he co-founded the steakhouse with his family. He was also disclosed as a co-owner of Mullin Family Holdco LLC (value unreported) and COP Hometown Parent LLC (valued between $500,000 and $1 million). The shares are divided among him, his spouse and children, with individual shares typically being valued between $500,001 and $1,000,000.
He also founded Mullin Environmental, according to his website. The company received a $169,200 COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program loan that was later forgiven, ProPublica reported.
He is the full or co-owner of at least 30 commercial, residential and land investment properties, four of which are valued at more than $1 million, according to 2024 financial disclosures. They are mostly located in Oklahoma, but he also owns an investment property in Washington, D.C., and Englewood, Florida.
He also listed dozens of company securities and mutual fund holdings in his 2024 disclosures, ranging in value from less than $1,001 to $1 million.
In 2024, Mullin also received a credit line from global financial services firm BNY worth $5,000,001 to $25,000,000, it was disclosed.
Start a business from home
He grew up on the family ranch in Westerville, Oklahoma, where he still lives and has six children with his wife, according to his Senate resume. He attended Missouri Valley College on a wrestling scholarship, but left school at age 20 to save his family business after his father became ill, according to his website. He received an applied science degree in construction technology from the Oklahoma State University College of Technology in 2010.
Mullin is one of several multimillionaires in the Senate. West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, who owns several coal and mining companies as well as the luxury Greenbrier resort, is worth about $664 million, according to financial technology firm Quiver Quantitative. (Quiver also estimates Mullin’s net worth at $65.9 million). Fast-track Sen. Mark Warner is the richest Democratic senator, with an estimated net worth between $7.6 and $303 million, mostly from investment funds, Business Insider reports.
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
