Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday took aim at what he called "baseless" and "false" allegations leveled against him by House Republicans ahead of a key vote on impeachment articles in the House Homeland Security Committee.
"I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted," Mayorkas said in a lengthy letter to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green.
The committee is meeting to advance two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, accusing him of refusing to follow immigration law and of breaching public trust. A vote is expected later in the day, likely along party lines, moving the articles to a House vote at a future date.
Mayorkas’ letter comes after Republicans have traded barbs with Democrats and the administration over the impeachment push against the Biden cabinet secretary, who Republicans have accused of a "dereliction of duty" in his handling of the ongoing and historic crisis at the southern border. Migrant numbers officially hit 302,000 in December, a new record, after 2.4 million encounters in FY23. Republicans have said that large releases into the interior and a rolling back of Trump-era policies have fueled the crisis.
Green’s majority began investigating Mayorkas’ handling of the border crisis last year and this month have held hearings on the impeachment articles that were sent by the House last year. Those articles accuse Mayorkas of having "repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security" and of having "made false statements to Congress" that the border is secure, and closed and that DHS is in operational control of the border.
"These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment," Green said this week. "He has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. He has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department. These facts are beyond dispute, and the results of his lawless behavior have been disastrous for our country."
Green accused Mayorkas of having "completely disregarded the separation of powers, a bedrock of our constitutional republic."
"Congress has a duty to see that the executive branch implements and enforces the laws we have passed. Yet Secretary Mayorkas has repeatedly refused to do so. His lawless behavior was exactly what the Framers gave us the impeachment power to remedy. It is time we take this affront to a coequal branch of government, to the Constitution, and to the American people seriously," he said in a statement this week.
The administration and House Democrats have instead blamed the crisis on a "broken" system in need of reform and funding from Congress, which they accuse Republicans of having failed to provide, amid a Hemisphere-wide crisis.
In his letter, Mayorkas declared that "problems with our broken and outdated immigration system are not new"
"Our immigration laws last received an overhaul in 1996. Our immigration laws were simply not built for 21st century migration patterns," Mayorkas said.
He pointed to stats including half a million removals since May, and daily removals nearly double what they were compared to from 2014-2019. He also says that the apprehension rate has been 78%, the same as the prior administration, and there have been a significant increase in removal flights within the Western Hemisphere.
He also points to increased Border Patrol hiring, an anti-smuggling campaign, and an intensified anti-fentanyl effort that has seen more seizures of the deadly drug which kills tens of thousands of Americans each year.
"Instead you claim that we have failed to enforce our immigration laws. That is false," he said.
He also pushed back on the criticism his department has faced over an alleged lack of responsiveness to oversight queries from Congress, claiming instead that he has been responsive to Congress with testimony, witnesses and documents.
"The allegations are baseless and inaccurate," he says.
MIGRANT CRISIS BROKE NEW RECORD IN DECEMBER WITH 302K ENCOUNTERS, OFFICIALS CONFIRM
House Democrats have also backed Mayorkas on the matter. On Monday, they released a lengthy report accusing the Republican majority of abusing the impeachment process and running a "sham" process, while sabotaging Mayorkas’ efforts to handle the border crisis.
"What is glaringly missing from these articles is any real charge or even a shred of evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors – the Constitutional standard for impeachment. That should come as no surprise because Republicans’ so-called ‘investigation’ of Secretary Mayorkas has been a remarkably fact-free affair. They are abusing Congress’ impeachment power to appease their MAGA members, score political points, and deflect Americans’ attention from their do-nothing Congress," Ranking Member Bennie Thompson said in a statement.
"Republicans don’t actually want to work towards bipartisan solutions to fix the border – in fact, they have repeatedly sabotaged the Secretary’s efforts to secure the border and denied DHS’ funding requests. Secretary Mayorkas is upholding the law and honoring the public trust as he has throughout his more than 30 years of service to our Nation. The House must reject this sham resolution."
Fox News' Chad Pergram, Elizabeth Elkind and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is predicting that not a single House Democrat will vote in favor of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the migrant crisis at the border.
The House Homeland Security Committee is meeting Tuesday morning to advance two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas – one for "willful and systematic refusal to comply with the law," and the second accusing him of a "breach of public trust."
"I still can't believe I had to force the floor vote on the House floor," Greene told Fox News Digital. "I guess I can be thanking these Democrats and these eight Republicans now that those articles of impeachment were moved, that my articles were moved to Homeland because… Chairman Mark Green and the other Republicans on Homeland, having dealt face-to-face and gone through all the hearings that we did, with all the witnesses that we brought in…they had the will to impeach Mayorkas."
WHITE HOUSE DEMANDS SPEAKER JOHNSON GIVE BIDEN ‘AUTHORITY AND FUNDING’ TO ‘SECURE THE BORDER’
Greene had attempted to bring her articles of impeachment for a vote twice in November. They were referred to committee the first time, avoiding the actual vote. She was persuaded to back down the second time after being assured the articles would go through the committee process.
The impeachment articles are likely to advance out of committee on party lines Tuesday. Then, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pledged a House-wide vote "as soon as possible."
Greene anticipated the impeachment articles will pass the House also along party lines, even with Republicans’ razor-thin majority, with no Democratic support.
"You would think with the situation as severe as it is… you would think that every Democrat, or at least some of the Democrats, would vote for this, but sadly, we're not going to see any Democrats vote for it," Greene said.
An adviser to House GOP leadership credited Greene with pushing the impeachment resolution to the floor, arguing "she deserves a lot of the credit"
"Let's be clear, the impeachment of Mayorkas would not be happening unless MTG held GOP leadership's feet to the flames," the adviser told Fox News Digital.
OPINION: DID BIDEN INTENTIONALLY CAUSE THE BORDER CRISIS?
Democrats have accused House Republicans of playing politics with the border crisis, including with the impeachment of Mayorkas.
Mayorkas’ defenders have repeatedly pointed out that he is part of bipartisan talks in the Senate on a border security compromise.
But House Republicans have criticized those talks, arguing that the resulting deal probably would not go far enough. They’ve also heaped skepticism on Mayorkas’ role in particular, claiming he cannot be part of a legitimate solution.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a Sunday memo, "This markup is just more of the same political games from House Homeland Security Committee (CHS) Republicans. They don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it. That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas."
FIRST ON FOX: An unearthed interview involving the father of Hunter Biden's longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, shows him boasting about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) praising his business book and amplifying it across China, according to a video reviewed by Fox News Digital.
As part of House Republicans' impeachment inquiry against President Biden, Eric Schwerin will appear Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee for a deposition. The committee obtained bank records indicating Schwerin "had access to bank accounts" that could be relevant to their probe.
Schwerin’s testimony comes after Fox News Digital first reported that as vice president, Biden used email aliases and private email addresses to communicate with Hunter Biden and his business associates hundreds of times, including with Schwerin. The communications came between 2010 and 2019, with most email traffic taking place while Biden served as vice president.
Schwerin, who visited the Obama White House and then-Vice President Biden's residence at least 36 times between 2009 and 2016, was considered Hunter's point person for their Chinese business deals and dubbed the "money guy."
However, another member of the Schwerin family could face questions about China ties after an unearthed interview details how the elder Schwerin, David Schwerin, separately touted having one of his books resonate with CCP leaders in the early 2000s. This visit led to him gaining intimate access over the next couple of decades and taking several trips to speak in China and conduct workshops for weeks at a time.
In an interview uploaded to YouTube in October 2020, the elder Schwerin discussed how an unnamed person in California read his book "Conscious Capitalism" and introduced him to CCP leaders. Schwerin said the interaction initially occurred "a year or two" after his book on business and "ancient wisdom" was published in 1998.
"He wanted to take it to China," Scherwin said during the interview. "At first, I was a little skeptical - I didn't know him. And as it turns out, he was able to do that - get it translated and published. I was invited shortly thereafter to come to China to speak about the ideas in the book. While the book can be looked at on different levels, one level was certainly socially responsible business, which is now corporate social responsibility or ESG."
Fox News Digital reviewed Schwerin's online presence and confirmed that the unnamed person's identity that Schwerin mentions was Dr. Zhihe Wang, according to one of his websites. The website says their "relationship began in 1998 when Zhihe was studying for his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University. He came across my first book, Conscious Capitalism: Principles for Prosperity in the Claremont library and contacted me offering to translate it and have it published in China."
According to Wang's bio, he was previously a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, whose leadership is stacked with multiple top CCP members. Schwerin continues, saying he would "become very friendly with [Wang], his wife and 18 year-old son and have helped Zhihe establish a business to use his contacts to arrange specialized trips to China for people interested in more than the standard touring." Wang touts on his now-defunct website that he organized dozens of American lectures in China and "established 17 research institutes affiliated with 15 Chinese universities [a]cross China."
"I went over there not knowing what to expect - a little bit nervous, to be honest with you - and I had the opportunity to speak to what I call Communist Party school, which is a school for senior-level Communist Party leaders to come back to get training," Schwerin said during the 2020 interview. "I spoke to them about what was inside my book. I had no idea what kind of reception I'd get. Believe it or not, they liked it. I really didn't know what to expect."
"They put my book in their bookstore, wrote about it in their newsletter, and before I knew it, a picture of the cover of my book - which had my face on it - was on the largest - or longest - bus line in China. From that point on, the Communist Party liked the idea enough to start encouraging their businesses to implement it," he said. "And when the Communist Party gets behind something, it has some influence. So, it took a number of years, but over a number of years this became widespread, this concept."
In a separate podcast interview from August 2020, Schwerin shared a similar account about the reception of his book and said that a CCP member said, "You touched my heart," referring to his presentation about his "Conscious Capitalism"book.
Schwerin said he has since visited China nine times to talk with CCP leaders and Chinese citizens, including holding several workshops there. On one of Schwerin's websites, he has a testimonial from Yao Xian Guo, who is listed as an Executive Dean of the "Economics School of Zhejiang University." However, he does not mention that Xianguo has won multiple "Outstanding Communist Party Member" awards.
"Thank you very much for your visit … Your lecture brought us new idea and new thinking style... Social responsibility is an important issue for enterprises in China, especially in the transformation period," Xianguo's testimonial said.
It is unclear whether the elder Schwerin was involved with the foreign business dealings of Hunter and Schwerin's son, but emails show that the younger Schwerin would share political articles with his dad and Hunter, sometimes including other business associates.
A spokesperson for the Democrat minority of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability told Fox News Digital in September that the younger Schwerin, the former president of Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca Advisors, served as then-Vice President Biden’s "bookkeeper" from 2009 until 2017.
A person familiar with Schwerin's role in handling then-Vice President Biden's finances previously told Fox News Digital that Schwerin worked on Biden's personal budget and helped coordinate with his tax preparers.
The individual also pointed to the frequency of Schwerin's communications with Biden and his top aides and said it was "inevitable" Rosemont Seneca business came up in conversations.
Fox News Digital reached out to David Schwerin for comment, but did not receive a response.
The government-funding can that Congress kicked down the road earlier this month is inexorably rolling toward the new deadlines in early March, and so far, none of the 12 appropriations bills that have to be completed have made it through both the House and the Senate. But that doesn’t seem to be a priority this week, because the House Republican majority is once more at war with itself, the Senate, and reality. The agenda for this week includes fighting over the border policy bill the Senate is preparing, fighting over a tax bill that should be a no-brainer for every member of Congress, and impeaching a cabinet secretary over nothing.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is working hard to appease both Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd in the House on the border legislation that a bipartisan group in the Senate has been working on. That’s the immigration policy changes Republicans insisted be included in a national-security supplemental funding package with aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Now that a deal on immigration—which Republicans have been claiming to be the most important policy issue of the day—is within reach, the House is rejecting it. They would rather have the issue to run on in this election than to actually do something to solve it.
That’s putting Johnson at loggerheads with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is pushing hard for some sort of deal in order to salvage assistance to Ukraine—a top priority for the Kentucky senator. Last week, Johnson said the deal is “dead on arrival,” without even seeing legislative language. And the fight has spilled over into the Senate, where hard-line MAGA members—like Ohio’s J.D. Vance, who is opposed to Ukraine aid—are lining up against McConnell.
“If you’re going to take a tough vote, you take one but you want to accomplish something. The worst of all possible worlds is you take a vote, you put a lot of political pressure on the House and you don’t get any policy accomplished,” Vance told Politico. The Senate could vote on the legislation as soon as this week.
Back in the House, there’s what should be a no-brainer tax bill on tap. But it’s got both the hard-liners and the moderates up in arms. The bill would extend the child tax credit to help more working families and reduce some business taxes. What more could you want in an election-year tax bill? Republicans are turning on each other along familiar breaklines: MAGA vs. everyone else.
The Freedom Caucus is pushing a lie that the tax credits would go to “illegal foreign nationals.” Of course, that’s not true, and even Americans for Tax Reform, a right-wing lobbying group, is saying so. They point out that anyone receiving the tax credit has to have a Social Security number, and that “There are no ‘anchor baby bonuses’ in this bill as one organization alleged.”
Meanwhile, the so-called “moderates” in the GOP conference—largely a group of New York Republicans representing swing districts—are hopping mad that their No. 1 issue isn’t included in the bill. That’s raising the SALT cap, the limit on federal deductions for state and local taxes. “There is real anger about the process,” one GOP lawmaker in the SALT Caucus told The Hill.
House moderates might unite on the other big issue in the House Homeland Security Committee: impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over nothing. Back in November, eight of them originally voted to defuse a motion from Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to impeach Mayorkas by instead sending it to committee. The group argued that if it was going to happen, it needed to happen through the committee process. Now that it has, they’ll probably be on board, never mind that there is absolutely no foundation for the action, and that the Senate will not vote to convict Mayorkas. It seems like this bunch of moderates figure they’ll have better luck getting reelected in their Biden districts on taxes than on bucking MAGA leadership.
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