Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI director Christopher Wray did not show up for a Senate Homeland Security hearing on Thursday as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to relieve both of them of their duties.
The break with precedent sparked outrage from committee chairman Senator Gary Peters (D., Mich.) and other lawmakers.
“In a shocking departure from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s longstanding tradition of transparency and oversight of the threats facing our nation, for the first time in 15 years, the Homeland Security Secretary and FBI Director have refused to appear before the Committee,” Peters said.
“Their choice to not provide public testimony about their departments’ efforts to address wide-ranging national security threats robs the American people of critical information and the opportunity for public accountability of what the federal government is doing to keep Americans safe,” he added.
When reached for comment, the FBI and DHS both told National Review the committee lawmakers would be better off meeting in a classified setting to discuss the threats to American national security.
“We remain committed to sharing information about the continuously evolving threat environment facing our nation and the extraordinary work the men and women of the FBI are doing,” the FBI said in a statement.
“FBI leaders have testified extensively in public settings about the current threat environment and believe the Committee would benefit most from further substantive discussions and additional information that can only be provided in a classified setting.”
A spokesperson for the DHS similarly said the agencies offered to hold a classified briefing and referred to its homeland threat assessment on the biggest threats to American national security for the upcoming year.
“DHS and the FBI have offered to the Committee a classified briefing to discuss the threats to the Homeland in detail, providing the Committee with the information it needs to conduct its work in the months ahead,” the spokesperson said.
“DHS and the FBI already have shared with the Committee and other Committees, and with the American public, extensive unclassified information about the current threat environment,” the spokesperson added.
Unsatisfied with that explanation, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) a member of the committee, is calling for Mayorkas and Wray to face subpoenas to testify.
“This is Mayorkas & Wray giving the middle finger to the American people. They are REQUIRED BY LAW to testify. And now they’re saying it’s good enough to post something on a website? Both are unfit for office. The Senate should subpoena them immediately and hold them in contempt,” Hawley said on X.
Trump has chosen South Dakota governor Kristi Noem (R) to replace Mayorkas as Homeland Security Secretary.
Mayorkas’s lax approach to illegal immigration made him a constant target of Republican ire throughout the Biden administration. House Republicans voted in February to impeach Mayorkas but the move went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Noem will be working closely with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan to follow through on the president-elect’s promise to oversee mass deportations and massively curtail the flow of illegal immigration across the southern border.
Vice President-elect J. D. Vance said earlier this week in a since-deleted X post the Trump transition team is holding interviews to fill the FBI director role. Trump appointed Wray during his first term but he quicjly became the subject of intense criticism over numerous controversies FBI decisions.
Those scandals included surveillance related to false claims of collusion between Trump and Russia, the FBI’s role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in 2022 during the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents.