More than a month after House Republicans ousted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the articles were finally delivered to the Senate on Tuesday, despite the GOP’s inability to find any evidence that he committed serious crimes had committed. Republicans in the Senate responded by demanding a full impeachment trial.
They didn’t get one. As NBC News reported, the Democratic majority in the Senate rejected both articles against the DHS chief just hours after the proceedings began.
A series of procedural votes took place, but ultimately it came down to a relatively simple question: Did senators find the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas constitutionally legitimate? In votes that the Republican minority could not filibuster, 51 votes were needed to reject the articles and end the process.
The votes on both articles were 51 to 49, with the entire Democratic Senate Conference united.
In other words, the case against the Secretary of Homeland Security has run its course and ended in a predictable manner.
But before the political world moves on, it’s worth considering how weak the Republicans’ talking points were. As Republican senators put it: (a) Democrats’ dismissal of the case against Mayorkas reflects a lack of seriousness about border policy; and (b) Democrats have set a dangerous new precedent by refusing to hold an impeachment trial in response to the House-passed articles.
“It doesn’t make any difference whether our friends on the other side thought he should be impeached or not. He was,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “And by doing what we just did, we essentially ignored the directions of the House that they were going to hold a trial. No evidence, no procedure – this is a day that is not a proud day in the history of the Senate.”
Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri added“So this will be the precedent for the future. Impeachment as a constitutional issue is now effectively dead. They just killed it.”
So a few things.
First, Republican lawmakers in neither chamber have treated this process with even a hint of seriousness in recent months. The entire impeachment ordeal was a cheap stunt, and Senate Republicans all but admitted that they wanted a trial as part of an election-season PR campaign.
Second, if Republican officials want to talk about which party is taking border policy seriously, perhaps they can explain why they were so quick to abandon the bipartisan border plan they called for.
Third, many of the Senate Republicans who insisted that the institution must conduct a full impeachment trial in response to House-sponsored articles are the same Senate Republicans who tried to forego a full impeachment trial three years ago in response to House-backed articles. after the second impeachment of Donald Trump.
As for the idea that Senate Democrats have set a dangerous precedent by rejecting articles of impeachment without trial, the Republican Party appears to have this backwards. The impeachment campaign against Mayorkas was itself a radical and unprecedented plan. The Republicans looked for evidence of serious crimes, but could not find any, and nevertheless decided to impeach a sitting Cabinet secretary – without cause – for the first time in American history.
As regular readers know, Republicans’ impeachment hearings against the DHS secretary were a joke; and the attempted impeachment was condemned by constitutional experts from left, right, and center, senators from both parties, some prominent voices in the conservative media, and former Homeland Security secretaries from both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The real risk would have been to legitimize the Republican party’s abuse, setting a much more dangerous precedent.
Yes, the Senate’s rejection of the articles was unprecedented, but it was a unique response to a unique abuse.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
