Sen. Marshall Demands Answers for Sec. Mayorkas Private Email Use

Washington, D.C.- U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. led a letter demanding answers to the reports of alleged use of personal email accounts at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by Sec. Mayorkas and other official employees. Personal email accounts may not be used to create or send records that include DHS records unless there is an ‘emergency.’ Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) obtained over 400 pages of emails from Sec. Mayorkas’ personal account reveals a pattern of DHS officials corresponding with Mayorkas regarding official non-emergency government business. 

“As you are no doubt aware, DHS policy on the use of non-DHS email directs that “employees may not use non-DHS email accounts to create or send email records that constitute DHS records” unless there is an “emergency,” Senator Marshall wrote. “Yet DHS’s recent FOIA production suggests that officials—including Special Advisor Ricki Seidman—intentionally communicated with you through your private account, including in instances where there were no obvious exigent circumstances justifying deviation from required agency practice.” 

“The sheer volume of communications on your private email and cell phone—especially communications with other DHS officials, federal legislators, and non-governmental interest groups and stakeholders— raises serious concerns about whether all official messages sent to or from these devices were properly forwarded back to your official DHS accounts,” Senator Marshall wrote.“The volume of messages also calls into question your insistence—during sworn testimony before a Senate committee—that anything you have ever received in your personal email address was sent “errantly.” 

In April, during a Homeland Security Committee hearing, Senator Marshall questioned Sec. Mayorkas about how often he uses his personal email for official matters. Under oath, Mayorkas responded to Senator Marshall’s questions saying:

“Your assertion is false,” Mayorkas responded. “If somebody errantly sends me an email on my personal email that should have been sent to my work email, I forward it to my work email. That’s what I do. I fulfill my responsibilities scrupulously, and I have 100% confidence in the integrity of my actions.”

You may click HERE or on the image below to read Senator Marshall’s full letter to Sec. Mayorkas.