Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday defended his record on the border, saying his impeachment by House Republicans has no basis in fact or law and he has no plans to slow down his work.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at the Munich Security Conference, his first since Tuesday’s impeachment vote, Mayorkas downplayed the vote’s effects on his day-to-day job, despite becoming the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached in 150 years.
“I don’t let it distract me from the work – would I have preferred that correctness had prevailed? Of course,” Mayorkas told Amanpour. “So, the fact that it did not, does not, slow me down in doing the work that I’m tasked to do by the president of the United States.”
The embattled homeland security secretary spoke to CNN on the sidelines of the annual security conference. In a wide-ranging interview, he also commented on the reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny and defended President Joe Biden’s mental acuity in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s report.
As a member of the administration’s delegation to the conference, Mayorkas rebuffed the idea that Tuesday’s impeachment had compromised his standing with world leaders.
“They very, very well understand the politics of the moment – not only in the United States, but in their respective countries as well,” he said. “And the leaders with whom I am meeting, the great majority of which I have met before – they know me. They know me, they know the seriousness of my purpose, and the fact that I am focused on mission. The politics are an aside.”
Mayorkas left the door open to defending himself during impeachment proceedings in the Senate but declined to weigh in definitively either way, telling Amanpour,…
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