Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) took a fall for House GOP leadership in Tuesday night’s floor vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which he said has been misinterpreted as not being on board with the Republican Party.
In a video posted to X on Wednesday, Moore explained that he was not in disagreement with Republicans’ decision to attempt to oust Mayorkas but that his last-minute move of switching his “yes” vote to “no” was politically calculated and at the request of House GOP leadership.
“There’s a lot of thought of folks out there — a lot of comments going around,” Moore said. “Somebody jokingly said to me, ‘Whoa, boy, I bet your communications team is going to be busy tonight as they got flooded with messages.'”
The House held the vote Tuesday evening. GOP leadership expected to have the votes to get it across the majority threshold, but in the final moments, the vote was tied 215-215. Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Tom McClintock (R-CA), and Ken Buck (R-CO) broke with their party and voted in defense of Mayorkas. All Democrats voted against the impeachment articles.
“I voted in favor of that motion,” Moore said. “Right before the vote was about to close, it was clear that that vote was going to fail. It was 215 to 215. And when it’s a tie in the House of Representatives, that means that that bill or that motion or that resolution will fail.”
Moore said it would be standard for the top House Republican to change his or her vote at the last minute in order to preserve the bill for another time through a motion to reconsider the same bill rather than let it fail and have to start all over with the legislative process.
However, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) was not at the House vote due to cancer treatment and therefore unavailable to change the outcome of the vote.
“That’s the fun about being on leadership,” Moore said. “Sometimes you take these things knowing that there’ll be some confusion … The majority leader’s team came to me, said, ‘Hey, Blake, like you did a few weeks ago, you had to do this procedure a few weeks ago,’ of course, no one ever heard about that one. They say, ‘Can you do it again?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.'”
A spokeswoman for Moore described to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday how the lawmaker’s office was inundated after switching his vote.
“We have gotten about 20 press requests,” Moore’s communications director, Caroline Hamilton, wrote in an email. “Additionally, we have gotten thousands of calls, voicemails, messages, social media comments, and individual texts and outreach to our team.”
The House is expected to try to impeach Mayorkas again when Scalise returns to Washington as soon as next week.
“He’s doing great,” Moore said. “He’s going to be OK, but he couldn’t be here on the House floor. So it was passed to me as another member of leadership to do it. That’s what took place. So instead of the bill failing, I voted. We’ll be able to motion to reconsider and this can be brought up at a later time.”
The Senate confirmed Mayorkas in February 2021 to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s 260,000 employees.
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) brought the impeachment articles against Mayorkas, which were drawn up by the House Homeland Security Committee last month. The secretary faces two counts: willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law, and a breach of the public trust related to his handling of the border crisis.
“He’s guilty of aiding and abetting the complete invasion of our country by criminals, gang members, terrorists, murderers, rapists, and over 10 million people from over 160 countries into American communities all across the United States,” Greene said during a floor speech ahead of the vote.
