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Gross Negligence: Why House Republicans Have More Than Enough To Impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas

DailyWire.com

The newly minted GOP majority in the House of Representatives has a lot on its plate: a debt ceiling negotiation, investigations into COVID origins, not to mention President Biden, his son Hunter, and the cavalcade of classified documents that keep showing up everywhere the president has ever been. But one matter of urgent business should not get lost in the shuffle. The impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas must be a top priority.

Democrats, and even some Republicans who disapprove of the admittedly drastic course of action, argue that the criticisms of Mayorkas are over policy, not over allegations of high crimes or misdemeanors. First of all, as we all remember quite well from the impeachments of Donald Trump, a “high crime or misdemeanor” is whatever Congress says it is, so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Even under more traditional definitions, however, Mayorkas’ shambolic tenure has more than risen to the needed level of negligence and dishonesty.

We can all agree that being bad at your job is neither a crime nor a misdemeanor, but performing your job with gross, glaring, and knowing negligence absolutely can be. This is especially true if the result of that negligence does severe harm to others, just ask Alec Baldwin.

Secretary Mayorkas has not simply performed poorly regarding his task to secure the southern border, he has simply refused to do it at all.

How do we know this? We know it because he won’t even admit the border is not secure. In fiscal year 2022, migrant crossings reached a record and shocking, 2.76 million — one million higher than any previous year. And it’s not just human beings, some of whom are brutally trafficked, it is also deadly amounts of fentanyl fueling a crisis of overdoses from sea to drug-addled sea. But if you ask Mayorkas, or the White House for that matter, there is nothing to see here; the border is secure, and everything is working as planned. It’s the very definition of gross negligence.

That brings us to the lying. Telling this tall tale about a secure border to the press and the American people is dereliction of duty, but not a crime. Telling it to Congress, however, is an entirely different matter. Mayorkas has a legal duty to be honest with those in Congress tasked with his oversight. No reasonable person can conclude he has been. Instead he has at best deflected their questions and at worst lied straight to their often furious faces.

But of all his lies, of all his derelictions, there is one that stands out above all others as a clarion call for his impeachment. Another form of lying that crosses legal boundaries is slander, and in regard to his own border agents who were falsely accused of the racist whipping of Haitian migrants on horseback — he is absolutely guilty of that heinous act. For almost a year he maintained this vicious and malicious lie was true, he even punished the agents and it’s utterly despicable.

Mayorkas said he was “horrified,” and that the horses had been “weaponized.” But new emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation show that Biden administration officials told him within days that he needed to clarify his remarks because reins are not whips. Not only did he fail to clarify the remarks, but he told Congress that an investigation would take place “in a matter of days, not weeks.” It took almost a year, and as it turned out there was no whipping, which was frankly obvious within hours of the incident when even the cameraman who took the footage said he saw no whipping.

Congress cannot allow our border agents to continue to work under a man who blatantly lies about them, who smears them as racist to advance his own political agenda. It’s an absolute disgrace and more than impeachable. From Biden’s document scandal to Mayorkas’ lies, this is clearly an administration that believes no rules apply to them, that they can do whatever they want with no consequence. Well, it’s time for some consequences.

Impeaching Mayorkas would not be a political stunt — in fact, it wouldn’t be political at all. It is the duty of Congress to remove officials in the executive branch for high crimes and misdemeanors when those misdeeds show that the official can no longer function in their role. Mayorkas has made Swiss cheese of a southern border that the Trump administration had brought under much greater control. This isn’t because of incompetence or laziness — it is intentional. Even the lies about the whipping were meant to deflect from his myriad failures.

The time to act is now, and the action to take is impeachment. Republicans in the House must not be afraid to do their duty.

David Marcus is a columnist and author of “Charade: The Covid Lies That Crushed A Nation.”

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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