NC House Committee Votes to Investigate Whether Impeachment of Elaine Marshall is Warranted

The North Carolina House Rules Committee has voted in favor of a resolution that will investigate whether or not Secretary of State Elaine Marshall should be impeached.

Rep. Chris Millis (R-Pender) introduced the resolution to investigate Marshall just months after he brought to light the allegations that Marshall commissioned illegal aliens as Notaries Public, while publicly calling for her to resign or risk facing impeachment.

“There’s clear and convincing evidence against the secretary,” Millis said, asserting that she ignored the law, exceeded her authority and undermined public confidence in her office.

Millis called for Marshall’s resignation at a March press conference where he provided more than 320 examples of illegal aliens the Secretary of State had commissioned as Notaries Publics. Many of the illegal aliens Marshall commissioned held DACA cards, a program enacted by the Obama Administration in which certain illegal aliens were granted deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit.

A press release provided by Rep. Millis’ office at the March press conference went into further detail outlining the ways in which Secretary Marshall violated state and federal law.

“State law requires that notaries meet a variety of requirements, including that they “reside legally in the United States.” Legal residence in the United States is conferred only via citizenship or by way of a Permanent Resident Alien Card (Form I-551, commonly known as a “green card”), issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“Millis says that documents obtained from Marshall show that her office routinely accepted another form of alien identification, a “DACA card” in lieu of green cards as proof of legal residency,” the release continued. “A DACA card is a temporary employment authorization to facilitate safe and legitimate work and income for otherwise undocumented aliens and does not confer legal immigration status.”

The investigation by Millis discovered that Marshall’s office allowed illegal immigrants to use DACA Driver Licenses, DACA Decision Approval Notices from Homeland Security, DACA Employment Authorization Approval Notices from Homeland Security, Mexican National Passports, and a NAFTA work/travel visa, as documentation to fulfill the “legal status” requirement.

According to Millis, one notary commissioned by the Secretary was “an alien against whom a final order of deportation or removal exists.”

“None of these 320+ notaries reside legally in the United States, as our North Carolina Notary Law requires,” Millis said in March. “Nor do they meet the requirements set forth on the application to become a notary, published by the Secretary of State’s office.”

Secretary Marshall’s illegal actions were first brought to light during her 2016 re-election campaign when Republican challenger Michael LaPaglia began pressing her on the issue.

Repeatedly, Marshall denied any wrong doing, going so far as to flat out lie about issue during a televised debate with LaPaglia after he presented evidence of the Secretary of State’s illegal behavior. Marshall continued to deny, and lie to the people of North Carolina that she had issued any notary public commissions to any DACA immigrants.

In September of 2016, the LaPaglia campaign began pushing to get answers about the illicit behavior of the Secretary of State’s office, after a concerned citizen, who had taken a notary public course at a western North Carolina community college, brought to their attention that many students in the course were in the country on temporary work authorizations issued as part of Obama’s DACA program.

LaPaglia and his team dug deeper into the allegations, and were able to discover that other DACA immigrants, in violation of state and federal law, had already been issued notary public commissions.

A video of an undercover investigation published by the Daily Caller in October of last year showed a citizen journalist proving that illegal immigrants were illegally issued notary public commissions by the Secretary of State.

With no coverage on the issue from the mainstream media, Marshall was able to win reelection to the office she’s now held for more than 20 years albeit by a much thiner margin than in years past.

Marshall’s office continued to deny the allegations Wednesday evening after the House committee had voted to open their investigation.

In a statement, Marshall remarked, “I strongly oppose today’s House Rules Committee resolution and I reject Representative Millis’ claim that any state or federal laws were broken by this department.”