(WASHINGTON) — The GOP-led House Homeland Security Committee has conducted two closed-door interviews with two former Trump Homeland Security officials, as the committee prepares to move forward with articles of impeachment against Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas next week, according to two officials briefed on the matter.
The two former Trump officials are Mark Morgan, who served as former commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Rodney Scott, who served as chief of the Border Patrol briefly under Mayorkas until August 2021.
The previously unreported testimony comes as Democrats and some Republicans, have blasted the process by which the impeachment inquiry has unfolded, saying the effort to remove Mayorkas involves a difference over policy and doesn’t meet the constitutional standard for impeachment.
A third closed-door interview with former Trump Acting ICE Director Tom Homan was scheduled for Thursday, but was canceled, according to a source familiar with the situation.
A conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is representing the two men, according to a source familiar with the situation. The foundation did not respond to an ABC News request for comment.
Both Democrats and Republicans were allowed to participate in questioning Morgan and Scott, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee slammed the process.
“It is telling that Chairman [Mark] Green is convening secret, closed-door interviews in collusion with the Heritage Foundation in a last-ditch effort to boost his non-existent argument for impeachment,” the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson said in a statement to ABC News. “The fact that they would rather hear from former Trump officials turned glorified Fox News talking heads – while refusing Secretary Mayorkas’s offer to testify – reeks of desperation. I think this will just add to our evidence that this impeachment process has been nothing but sham from the start – a political stunt.”
Chairman Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican, said the effort in hosting Morgan and Scott was “to gather testimony specifically related to Secretary Mayorkas’ handling of the border crisis since coming into office.”
“These interviews followed nine previous transcribed interviews with Border Patrol chief patrol agents responsible for the southwest border sectors, and were conducted by the Republican and Democratic staffs of both the House Homeland Security and House Oversight Committees,” Green said.
Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, asked House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer during a hearing on Jan. 17, if the transcripts of the nine border patrol official interviews could be released to the public, but so far neither the Oversight Committee nor the Homeland Security Committee has released the full transcripts.
In his prepared remarks, Morgan said the Biden Administration “immediately began to dismantle the network of tools, authorities and policies we had in place,” according to his testimony. He called the effort “intentional.”
Morgan left the Department of Homeland Security on Inauguration Day 2021 and did not work with Mayorkas as secretary.
A lawyer for Morgan and Scott advised the men during the deposition to not answer any questions about their experiences and actions that predated the Biden administration, any potential campaign activity or involvement, or the involvement of The Heritage Foundation in the impeachment probe, according to a source familiar with the deposition.
The former officials sat for closed-door testimony, the same process in which House Republicans, including now Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, objected to in 2019, when Democrats were holding impeachment hearings against former President Donald Trump.
“Transcribed interviews are a common practice when seeking in-depth testimony from expert witnesses in a non-public setting. It’s pretty pathetic to see Democrats stooping to silly comparisons of their sham process in 2019 when the record of these proceedings clearly shows they were actively involved in all of the interviews scheduled by the Committee as part of the investigation into the chaos at our borders,” Green said. “Desperation apparently leads to projection in this town.”
Green said during the Trump impeachment inquiry in 2019 that “the American people deserve and demand transparency.”
The Department of Homeland Security has said impeachment against the secretary is not legitimate, and that the secretary has been working with Congress in good faith to fix a “broken” immigration system.
The impeachment hearings are nothing but “politically-motivated” and are “lead by extremists” the DHS said in a memo released earlier this month.
There was also an exchange between the committee and the secretary on when to appear before the committee.
Mayorkas has been willing to testify before the committee, according to a letter obtained by ABC News last week, but not on the date Republicans offered because he was getting ready to host Mexican officials.
Chairman Green objected, and said Secretary Mayorkas had an obligation to the committee and said the date was set in stone, accusing DHS of stonewalling oversight efforts.
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