Newsmax host Rob Schmitt was in a heated back-and-forth Monday night with a Republican congressman who voted against the impeachment of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Schmitt interviewed Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), a soon-to-be retired lawmaker who was one of only three in his party to side with Democrats against the impeachment vote, which failed at first but passed on its second attempt. Schmitt seemed perplexed as to why Buck didn’t go along with the GOP-led legislation, which Buck recently called a “political gimmick.”
“High crimes, misdemeanors, whatever you wanna call it, I mean, when your job is to secure a country, and you just let everybody come in and you invite everybody in, and you bring in all that crime and misery… I just don’t understand how that doesn’t meet the bar of impeachment for Mayorkas,” Schmitt wondered.
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Buck countered by asking Schmitt what specific crime he believed the Homeland Secretary committed.
“Well, what’s the crime? What’s the crime? 18 United States Code—what? You tell me, Rob. What is the crime?”
“I think lying to the public over and over again, telling them that the border is secure—I think that should be a crime,” Schmitt replied. “I mean, I think it should be a crime to take a job and to exploit it for just the opposite. Is it not?”
Buck responded that lying to Congress is a crime, but it’s not illegal to “take a job and then exploit it for the opposite.”
“In his opinion, the border was secure. In my opinion, it’s not secure. In your opinion, it’s not secure,” he explained. “But when you start getting into opinions and charging people under 18 U.S. Code § 1001 with a false statement, that gets very specific and he would not be convicted in front of a jury.”
The articles of impeachment against Mayorkas charge that he “refused to comply” with immigration law and “breached the public trust” for his handling of the southern border.
Meanwhile, Republican leadership is still struggling to gather enough evidence to impeach President Joe Biden, especially since one of their key figures just got indicted for lying to the FBI about Biden and his son, Hunter. That impeachment effort Buck has also opposed, calling it a distraction centered around a “narrative in right-wing media.”
