FIRST ON FOX: Carl and Marsha Mueller, the parents of ISIS murder victim Kayla Mueller, offered their full endorsement of Kash Patel for FBI director, after years of building a personal relationship with the Trump administration nominee.
“He loves his country. He loves the people of this country,” Marsha Mueller told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview via Zoom on Monday morning. “To us, you know, he is a person that we would go to for help. And he is so action oriented.”
“Just like Trump,” Carl Mueller added to his wife’s comments on Patel’s action-motivated personality.
The Muellers wrote a letter this week to Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., of the Senate Judiciary Committee, offering their full endorsement of Patel to serve as director of the FBI under the second Trump administration.
Their daughter Kayla was abducted by terrorists while leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, in 2013, when she was assisting with humanitarian efforts amid the country’s bloody civil war. She was held hostage for 18 months, when she was believed to be repeatedly tortured and raped by ISIS militants, including then-ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
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Carl Mueller, right, and Marsha Mueller show a picture of their daughter Kayla, who was killed by ISIS when she was an aid worker in Syria, as they attend the State of the Union address in 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
She was killed in 2015 — with her parents speaking to Fox Digital just days ahead of the 10-year anniversary of her death, on Feb. 6.
Patel served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, which put him in the Mueller’s orbit when he assisted in overseeing the military operation to eliminate ISIS chief al-Baghdadi in 2019.
“We would like to add our voices to those in support of Kash Patel’s nomination to be the director of the FBI,” the Mueller’s letter to Senate lawmakers and obtained by Fox News Digital reads. “Any family who has lived through such an experience will know the value of dedicated, compassionate law enforcement officials.”
“Because we have watched him at his work over time, and because we have personal experience of his dedication, we know that Kash Patel is such a person,” the letter continues. “We continue to see in him a genuinely kind, thoughtful, action-oriented man who focuses on what is true and right and just. He loves our country and our citizens and wants the best for us all. He wants our country to be the best it can be.”
Patel personally has been at the Muellers side over the past five years, they told Fox News Digital. He has stood out from the crowd as a federal government employee who sincerely cares for Americans who are suffering and will pick up the phone “night or day” to speak with them following the tragic loss of their daughter.
“I’m confident if I texted him right now, he would get back to me before this interview is over,” Carl Mueller said.
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Kash Patel, left, meets with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in his Washington, D.C., office in 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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Patel previously served as a public defender in Florida’s Miami-Dade area, as well as a Department of Justice official during the Obama administration, when he won awards for his prosecution and conviction of 12 terrorists responsible for the World Cup bombings in 2010.
Patel hit the national radar during Trump’s first administration, including when he worked as a national security advisor and senior counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under the leadership of then-Committee Chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
Kayla Mueller, pictured here, was abducted by terrorists while leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, in 2013. (The Associated Press)
The Muellers reflected on the first time they met with Patel at the White House nearly five years ago when he served on the National Security Council, and how he told them to contact him at any time with questions about their daughter or to just talk.
President Donald Trump, center, in October 2019, monitors developments as U.S. Special Operations forces close in on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound in Syria with a mission to kill or capture the terrorist. (Shealah Craighead/The White House via Getty Images)
“We actually met Kash — we were back in D.C. at the White House, and he actually came to us and found us. That’s the first time we met him and wanted us to go meet with him and National Security Advisor, [Robert O’Brien]. So that’s how we first came to meet him. So it’s been almost five years ago. And they wanted to sit down and talk with us about Kayla. And we told them that we were working, and we’re still working with, [former FBI agent] Ali Soufan. And they told us to continue to work with him and they would help in any way they could. And so that was our first meeting,” Marsha Mueller said.
In their letter endorsing Patel, the Muellers reflected on the nominee’s note to them encouraging them to reach out, which came as a departure from their treatment under the Obama administration, they said.
Carl and Marsha Mueller, pictured here in 2020, wrote a letter offering their full endorsement of Kash Patel to serve as director of the FBI under the second Trump administration. (Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)
“It was actually after that first meeting when we met him, and he wrote us the note, and he said, ‘Please contact me at any time, day or night, with whatever questions you may have, or simply if you just need someone to speak with. I’ll always answer your call.’ And, you know, he’s kept every promise he’s ever made to us, as we knew we would from meeting him that first time,” Marsha Mueller told Fox News Digital.
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The Muellers previously spoke out against the Obama administration’s handling of their daughter’s captivity in Syria, repeatedly saying she would not have been murdered if Trump was in office when she was taken hostage. Carl Mueller underscored the conviction in his interview on Monday, adding that the second Trump administration not only reopens lines of communication for his family, but extends hope to families around the country who have loved ones in the hands of terrorists.
“We didn’t want to forget to mention to the families of current American hostages that their chances of getting their loved ones home have exponentially increased with the Trump administration in there,” Carl Mueller said. “As I said before, if Trump would have been in office, Marsha and I are convinced that Kayla would be home. And we feel that he will do everything to get current American hostages. So just a word of encouragement and hope for them, because we know that sometimes hope is all they have.”
Then-President Barack Obama offered his condolences to the family following Kayla’s death in 2015, vowing that the U.S. would bring the terrorists to justice.
“She has been taken from us, but her legacy endures, inspiring all those who fight, each in their own way, for what is just and what is decent. No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla’s captivity and death,” Obama said at the time, just roughly four years before the Trump administration wiped out ISIS’s leader.
Kayla Mueller’s remains have not been recovered, but the couple believes the second Trump administration reinvigorates efforts to bring her and other hostages who have been murdered back to the U.S.
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“We believe [the Trump administration] will work closely with Ali Soufan to help us find Kayla and hopefully other hostages that were killed and bring them home as well,” Marsha Mueller said, referring to a former FBI agent who has worked with the Muellers across the years following Kayla Mueller’s captivity and murder.
President Donald Trump announces from the White House in October 2019 that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a military operation in northwest Syria. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Patel, if confirmed, will replace former FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom the Muellers also lauded as a compassionate man who has also helped their efforts across the years. Looking ahead to the next four years, they said they are “very fortunate and looking forward to more progress and finding Kayla through the Trump administration.”
Patel is set to join the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday as the final leg of his nomination process kicks off in earnest. Patel has been on Capitol Hill meeting with Senate lawmakers to rally support for his nomination, earning praise from conservative lawmakers such as Tennessee Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, as well as endorsements from key law enforcement groups, such as the National Sheriffs’ Association. Patel is expected to face an uphill battle overall to secure the nomination, as Democrats balk that he lacks the qualifications to lead the law enforcement agency and would politicize the agency.
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Kash Patel, a former chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, is followed by reporters as he departs from a deposition meeting on Capitol Hill on Dec. 9, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Muellers explained that even when Patel was no longer serving in the first Trump administration, he met with the couple and other families suffering from losing a loved one to terrorist captivity. The Muellers were among family members who attended the trial of ISIS terrorist El Shafee Elsheikh, a member of the so-called “ISIS Beatles,” who admitted to his involvement in and knowledge of Kayla Mueller’s captivity.
Elsheikh’s trial was held in 2022, when he was convicted by a jury in the Eastern District of Virginia and sentenced to eight concurrent terms of life imprisonment for holding four American citizens, as well as British and Japanese nationals, hostage before their deaths.
Patel joined the Muellers and other affected families during the trial, the couple explained, meeting them and “anyone that wanted to talk with him” at their hotel and speaking to them for maybe an hour.
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“It was not just the Americans that came down when we were sitting there with him,” Marsha Mueller said. “Actually, people from other countries did, too, because … he was willing to sit and talk with us. I was really deeply touched by that.”
“But, you know, there was no reason, he was not in government anymore. But yet it was still in his heart and soul for justice,” she said.
The couple reflected on the past decade, when they first learned their daughter was murdered, remarking that Obama administration officials “will have to live with” their failure of not bringing the American citizen home before her death.
Marsha Mueller also read her daughter’s letter to her family while she was held captive, including a portion of the note that was not widely reported.
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“We always like Kayla to speak for herself. And there’s a quote out there that most people know, but they don’t know what she said after that quote, and if I can get through it, she said, ‘I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.’ But she went on to say, ‘that is my life’s work, but my family is my life.’”
“That’s Kayla,” Marsha Mueller said through tears. “She loved us. We love her. And we encourage her to go out and help all the people she could in this world.”
