WASHINGTON — Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) crossed party lines to advance his colleague Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security in a nail-biting committee vote Thursday.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against reporting Mullin (R-Okla.) to the full Senate, but Fetterman voted in favor of sending the pick to the floor for a final vote.

All 13 other committee members voted along party lines, making the final tally 8-7 in Mullin’s favor.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member Sen. John Fetterman (above) saved Mullin’s nomination to lead DHS. Getty Images

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul voted against reporting Mullin to the full Senate. Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters Wednesday that Mullin would receive a final confirmation vote “hopefully early next week.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the panel, was the only member to speak ahead of the vote, noting that he would reject Mullin’s nomination because he “has failed to be forthright and transparent” and lacks “the experience or the temperament” to lead the domestic law enforcement agency.

Peters also quoted from a Senate Ethics Committee finding on Mullin related to a 2023 incident in which the Oklahoma Republican offered to fight Teamsters president Sean O’Brien during a Senate Housing, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing.

“When offered multiple public opportunities to clarify the intent of your conduct, you declined to uphold the Senate standard,” Peters read from the finding, “and advocated physical violence as a means to resolve political disagreement.”

All 13 other committee members voted along party lines, making the final tally 8-7 in Mullin’s favor. WILL OLIVER/EPA/Shutterstock

Mullin had defended his conduct on Wednesday, insisting that he was “simply pointing out … some of the rules that still apply to this body — for instance, dueling with two consenting adults — is still there.”

Congress outlawed dueling in the District of Columbia in 1839.

Paul erupted at Mullin during the hearing for having “no regrets” about his history of pugnacious remarks — which also included condoning a 2017 assault against Paul himself by a crazed Kentucky neighbor.

“We just don’t get along,” Mullin fired back at Paul. “That doesn’t keep me at all from doing my job. I can have differences of opinion with everybody in this room, but as secretary of Homeland, I’ll be protecting everybody — including Kentucky as much as my own backyard in Oklahoma.”

“I’ve worked with many people in this room. It seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us,” added Mullin, a former MMA fighter. “And as far as me saying that I invoke violence … I don’t think anybody should be hit by surprise. I don’t like that.”

By contrast, Fetterman praised Mullin for treating him with “consistent kindness and professionalism” since the two arrived in the Senate together in 2023.

“Even before you got the call for the big job, we were even discussing about getting together and having dinner as family,” the Democrat said. “So, that’s an ongoing relationship, because that’s also part of the fact [that] here in this town, you gotta get along and find a way to work together, and now we have to come at it and just let things go in the past.”

Paul and Peters also grilled Mullin on his failure to share details about a “classified” trip he took overseas while a House lawmaker — the details of which were revealed after the ranking member listed other travels shared in an FBI report.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin speaking at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the US Capitol. Michael Brochstein/ZUMA / SplashNews.com

“In 2015, I was asked to train with a very small contingency and go to a certain area, which was scheduled for 2016,” Mullin told Peters, saying he had to “meet certain training qualifications” that included a military survival program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training.

“I’ve never spoken specifically on details, on dates, or on the mission,” Mullin also said. “And like I said, that was an official trip that is classified.”

Later Wednesday, Mullin, Peters and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) huddled in a secure setting to learn more about the trip.