WASHINGTON – After a week’s delay, the House of Representatives will send its articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for the president said. Mike Johnson confirmed.
It will kick off what is expected to be a very short trial in the Senate – a process that could be completed by the end of the week. However, Republicans, who are demanding a full trial in the Senate, are fighting to delay the process in an effort to draw attention to what they see as Mayorkas’ failure to restrict migrant crossings and secure the southern border.
As was done for Donald Trump’s two impeachments, impeachment managers will escort a pair of articles from the House chamber, through the Rotunda and onto the Senate floor sometime after 2:00 PM ET.
The Senate receives the articles and all hundred senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial on Wednesday afternoon. It is unclear exactly how long the trial will take, the Senate majority leader said Chuck SchumerDN.Y. has said the Senate will consider the matter “expeditiously.”
It is expected that Senate Democrats, who control the House, will unite and vote to dismiss or table the issue, and then move on to other matters, including the need for the House to pass a to renew a crucial spy tool before it expires on Friday. None of the 51 Democrats in the Senate have said they support Mayorkas’ impeachment, and even a handful of Republican senators have said the impeachment is pointless.
“Impeachment should never be used to resolve a disagreement over policy; that would set a terrible precedent for Congress,” Schumer said in a speech Monday. “Yet, the Senate’s plan has not changed since last week. We are ready to go as soon as the House sends us the articles. We want to address this issue as quickly as possible.”
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, originally planned to send the Mayorkas articles to the Senate on April 10, but Senate conservatives, led by Mike Lee of Utah, successfully lobbied the speaker to delay the action to avoid a quick dismissal by the Democrats at the end. of the week as lawmakers prepared to leave Washington.
Mayorkas, Biden’s top border official and the first Latino to lead the Department of Homeland Security, became only the second Cabinet secretary in history — and the first since 1876 — to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The Republicans’ first attempt to impeach him failed spectacularly in the House of Representatives, but on the second attempt, on February 13, they were successful with only one vote remaining; the total was 214-213, with three Republicans joining all Democrats in voting no.
In their two articles, House Republicans accused Mayorkas of “high crimes and misdemeanors” for failing to enforce immigration and border security laws, which they said resulted in “millions” of undocumented immigrants arriving each year entering the US illegally; and for knowingly lying to Congress under oath.
Mayorkas’ Democratic allies have dismissed the Republican Party’s impeachment as a politically motivated “sham” launched months before the presidential election and argued that Republicans’ criticism of the DHS secretary amounts to policy differences rather than impeachable offenses. Several conservatives have argued against impeaching Mayorkas, calling the move inappropriate. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., a Trump ally, called it “the worst, stupidest exercise and use of time.”
The House of Representatives’ eleven impeachment managers, Johnson’s appointed prosecutors, are a mix of senior Republicans and conservative hardliners.
They are: Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee; Homeland panel vice chairman Michael Guest of Mississippi; Chairman of State Mike McCaul of Texas, previously chairman of Homeland; Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York; Representative August Pfluger of Texas; Representative Laurel Lee of Florida; four conservative members of the Freedom Caucus: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Ben Cline of Virginia and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming; and far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., one of Trump’s key allies on the Hill who led the effort to oust Mayorkas.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
