Mayorkas Impeachment Trial Will Be As Flimsy As the Charges

The freshly impeached secretary of Homeland Security. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

One of the more embarrassing incidents involving the regularly embarrassed House Speaker Mike Johnson was the fumbled impeachment of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on February 7. Thanks to a botched whip count, the resolution failed initially; it was brought back up and passed by a single vote on February 14. This phony-baloney measure wound up being a sort of poisoned valentine to Joe Biden, since the only basis for Mayorkas’s dismissal is that he followed the administration’s polices on border security.

But any congressional impeachment measure triggers a Senate trial, pointless or not. So the Senate’s Democratic leaders are mulling what sort of contemptuous treatment they should mete out to the notion that Mayorkas should be solemnly adjudged for high crimes and misdemeanors.

It’s not enough for Democrats to say the resolution is dead on arrival in the Senate, since the same was pretty obviously true of the two impeachments of Donald Trump that the House passed in 2019 and 2021. But they are not obliged to give Republicans an extended high-profile forum for 2024 messaging blasting Biden for an alleged conspiracy to throw open the southern border, inviting criminals and terrorists to pour across “open borders” and quickly become welfare recipients and loyal Democrat voters.

The most peremptory treatment Senate Democrats could give the impeachment resolution would involve a motion to dismiss the charges, requiring a simple majority vote, as Politico reports:

A motion to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas would not be without precedent. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) attempted to use a motion to dismiss at former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, but the vote failed.

It’s more likely, says Politico, that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will observe the trappings of a trial while making sure it ends quickly:

Senate Democratic leadership has already laid out some plans for the trial. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said House impeachment managers will present the articles of impeachment to the Senate after this week’s recess. Senators will be sworn in as jurors the next day and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will preside over the proceedings.

Schumer himself has called the Mayorkas impeachment a “sham” and insisted “House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense.”

It’s well known that a lot of Senate Republicans are embarrassed by the whole impeachment effort. North Dakota senator Kevin Cramer went so far as to call it “the worst, dumbest exercise and use of time.” But unsurprisingly, there are some conservatives who view a trial as an opportunity to twist and shout on border security and perhaps even make Mitch McConnell uncomfortable, as Spectrum News noted:

In a letter to McConnell on Tuesday, 13 Senate Republicans, led by Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, wrote that multiple briefings by McConnell’s staff have also indicated that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democratic lawmakers “intend to dispense with the articles of impeachment by simply tabling both individually.” …

“We call on you to join us in our efforts to jettison this approach by Democrats to shirk their Constitutional duty, ensure that the Senate conducts a proper trial, and that every Senator, Republican and Democrat, adjudicates this matter when the Senate returns,” the Republicans wrote.

Lee and Cruz, Axios reported, have met with the Senate parliamentarian to press for a ruling that a full Senate trial of Mayorkas is required.

No matter how this maneuvering turns out, it’s reasonably clear that Republicans are more confident about their border-security message than the opposition party. If Democrats really believed the border-security deal that Republicans killed on Donald Trump’s orders gives Biden and the party the upper hand on this issue, you’d figure they’d welcome the kind of debate a Mayorkas impeachment trial would create. It’s more likely they’ll provide the absolute minimum time necessary for the Senate proceedings and move on to other business, as Tim Kaine suggested to Politico:

“We view it as a stunt,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said of Senate Democrats’ outlook on the Mayorkas impeachment. “I bet the preference is going to be to spend as little time on it as possible so we can focus on [spending], the [national security aid debate] … and then I think we also want to take up the House’s bipartisan tax reform bill.”

Nothing to see here, folks.