The father of Kayla Mueller asserted that President Trump made the right decision to hide from Congress the raid that killed Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader who tortured his daughter for 18 months.
Carl Mueller also told the Washington Examiner he is hopeful the Trump administration will continue to help him and his wife Marsha Mueller find out what ultimately happened to Kayla.
Kayla Mueller, 26, was an American Christian woman doing humanitarian work in Syria when she was kidnapped by ISIS terrorists outside a hospital in Aleppo on Aug. 4, 2013. Held hostage for more than a year, she was imprisoned in “cold, dark places,” according to smuggled letters she wrote to her family. Baghdadi raped her repeatedly. Other hostages who were with her in her confinement, but who later escaped, described her as “a really strong girl” who refused to convert to Islam even under torture and defended her faith to the bloodthirsty “Jihadi John.” She was reportedly killed during coalition airstrikes in early 2015, though the U.S. government has yet to confirm her cause of death.
Carl Mueller was reluctant to comment on politics or much of the media coverage of the Baghdadi raid, but he mentioned that while he was perusing the news on Sunday, he stopped on CNN. “They were already berating President Trump for not telling the House Intelligence Committee about this raid,” he said. “And then the next day, Nancy Pelosi comes out and says she was upset that he told Russia and he didn’t tell the House Intelligence Committee.”
In the Sunday press conference during which he announced the death of Baghdadi, Trump maintained that he kept the military operation a secret from Congress because he was afraid it would leak. “We were going to notify [congressional leadership] last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before,” Trump said, adding, “I told my people we will not notify them until our great people are out — not just in, but out.”
“I stand with Mr. Trump on this, the president,” Carl Mueller said. “I came up with a simple formula, and I ask people to honestly answer the question that I raise, given all the leaks that come out of D.C. constantly, especially in the Trump administration. If you had the fate of 100 men on your shoulders — and if you made the wrong move, those men could lose their lives — if you had to make the call, how many people would you tell about this raid?”
“If there happened to be a leak, they could all die,” he said. “He did the right thing. He was protecting those soldiers.”
Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Examiner on Monday that because the partisan hatred in Washington, D.C., has risen to such a fever pitch, the president was wise to hide the raid from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“If you’re worried about our troops, you can tell that, I mean — Pelosi hates Trump, and she’s going to do everything she can to hurt him,” Scott said. “And you can’t trust them. I think Trump made a good decision.” Kirsten Fontenrose, a former member of Trump’s White House National Security Council, went so far as to claim “there was very likely a concern that the Democrats in Congress would try to slow-roll or block this operation in order to prevent the president from claiming a victory.”
[Related: Obama’s CIA deputy scolds Trump for ‘locker room feel’ of Baghdadi speech]
Pelosi demanded a House briefing after news broke of the military operation, which Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley named after Kayla Mueller. “The House must be briefed on this raid, which the Russians but not top Congressional Leadership were notified of in advance, and on the Administration’s overall strategy in the region,” Pelosi said in part. “Our military and allies deserve strong, smart, and strategic leadership from Washington.”
“I can’t believe she even said that because she has to know military strategy,” said Mueller. “I’m not a military strategist. I’m not a senator. But had he not informed Russia, those eight helicopters could have very well been shot down when they came into Syria.”
The Muellers’ grief will always be with them, but Carl Mueller said the success of the raid and the death of his daughter’s tormentor had given them some closure. He and Marsha Mueller nevertheless remain tireless in their efforts to find out exactly what happened to Kayla Mueller. With the help of the Soufan Group, a private security firm, they were able to meet in jail with Umm Sayyaf, a woman who had imprisoned Kayla Mueller in her house and was one of the last to see her alive.
Aided by a cooperative Trump administration, Carl Mueller believes answers about his daughter will someday come.
“We have to stand with President Trump,” Carl Mueller said, mentioning he spoke on the phone with the president for 18 minutes on Sunday. “As always, this president gets things done. He’s decisive, he’s proactive, he goes on the offense and gets it done.”
Referencing other American hostage families, Carl Mueller said Trump “did what he did for my family, for the Sotloffs, for the Foleys, and for the Kassigs, and the other families; thousands of Yazidis [that ISIS] murdered and enslaved. That’s why he did this. He did it for the American citizens that he’s supposed to protect. And I just want to reiterate that it’s been amazing to deal with this administration.”
“We’re very optimistic that this administration is going to help us accomplish what we’ve been seeking for 5 1/2 years,” he added.
