Maloy Explains Vote On Mayorkas Impeachment

U.S. Representative Celeste Maloy from Utah’s 2nd Congressional District joined us on the radio this morning to update us on some of the matters going on in Congress. We were originally planning on talking about Maloy’s vote on the FISA reform bill expected to happen on Friday. Maloy wasn’t able to talk about the vote, because it didn’t happen. 

She explained, “Yeah, we were scheduled to vote on a FISA reform bill on Friday. And the vote got cancelled. From what I understand, the two chairmen, the chairman of Intel and Judiciary who have separate FISA reform bills had gotten in a room with some of their colleagues and hammered out all their differences and leadership thought we were ready to vote on one bill and something happened on Wednesday, and the two committees sort of separated again. So we're back to hammering out differences. They're both Republican bills. They're both FISA reform bills. Both of them are trying to accomplish the same larger goal, which is closing up any loopholes that allow intelligence agencies to spy on Americans. They're only supposed to be able to track foreign actors outside of the United States.” 

With Congress in recess, no action will be taken on FISA reform until at least the last week of February. Maloy explained that they were originally scheduled for a two week spring break, but that the second week off has been shortened and that she will be back in Washington the middle of next week.

We then talked with Representative Maloy about the vote to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. During her campaign, Maloy had said that impeachment should only be used as a last resort, so we asked why she voted in favor of impeaching the secretary. 

“That's a really fair question,” Maloy said, “Several people asked me in the last week or so, isn't this just a political gimmick and I'll tell you why I got to yes on this impeachment. Secretary Mayorkas, and I don't even think this part's controversial, I haven't heard anybody defend the job he's doing at the border. Our border is a mess. I went down there, I saw it. Secretary Marcus is part of the executive branch, but he's not elected, and we only have so many options for holding him accountable when he's derelict in his duties. And as the legislative branch, which I belong to, we have a responsibility to act as a check on the executive branch and the tools we have are the purse strings, so we could defund what he's doing at the border. Which is nothing. And so it it's a useless tool in this case, cutting funding at the border would only make the area less secure. (Or) we can impeach him. So I felt like as a member of the legislative branch, we had a duty to act and this is the action that's available to us, we can impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security and you know, everybody keeps pushing back on us in the House and saying the Senate is not going to remove him from office. That's on the Senate. You can ask them why they're not going to do it, but we had to do something and this is the tool that we have.” 

We then asked Maloy about the House losing a Republican member, and if that was going to make it even more difficult to get legislation passed.

“We're having a hard time getting a majority on anything we have. I think a 2 vote majority right now and that means two people can stop anything from happening on the House floor because it's not like Democrats have a lot of incentives right now to cross the aisle and help a small Republican majority get anything done. One, they actually do disagree with us on policy. And two, political reality is it's an election year and it's a presidential election year. So the president is on the ballot. And House Democrats don't have a lot of incentive to try to help us get anything conservative done. They want to hold the line for their party. And I know people get really frustrated with that. I don't blame them. I don't really like that,” Maloy said. 

Maloy also wanted to let us know about two new offices she is opening to stay in better touch with her constituents. 

“So, my main district office is in St. George, and then I've got a Bountiful office, but St. George and Bountiful, (the) two ends of the district and there are a lot of people in between that have a hard time getting to St. George or Bountiful when they need help. So I'm opening offices in Richfield and Delta,” Maloy told us. 

These new offices will be part time offices, but she will have staff available in those communities to work with constituents in the rural areas of the district. 

The congressperson also mentioned she is working to get more flight availability from the Cedar City Regional Airport. You can listen to our segment with Representative Maloy below.