House Republicans won’t send the Senate articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for a possible trial until next week, as fears grow that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could bring proceedings to a close before they even begin.
“To ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week,” said Taylor Haulsee, a spokesman for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
“There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial.”
House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February — on the second try after not having enough votes on the first — for failing to enforce federal immigration law and lying to Congress about the US border being “secure.”
Those two articles had been scheduled for Wednesday delivery to the Senate, Johnson announced last week, but Republicans — including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — expect Democrats to pass a motion to dismiss or table the proceedings.
“The timing of the delivery of those is very unfortunate,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Post on Tuesday morning when asked about the April 10 date set by the House speaker.
“Should have been done early in the week so that we could have time in the Senate as Republicans to push back on just an early tabling,” he said. “There’ll be a great deal of pressure to just snuff it out, which I think is really unfortunate.”
“If they’re serious about using impeachment to highlight the catastrophe of the southern border,” Johnson added of his House Republican colleagues, “the timing of the delivery of those impeachment charges should have been worked in a co-operative way with Senate Republicans so we can figure out what’s the best way to utilize this impeachment to give it as public a hearing as possible.”
By mid-afternoon Tuesday, other Republican senators were spreading the word that Johnson had agreed to hand over the articles next week.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told reporters Tuesday that any attempt by Senate Democrats to end a trial of Mayorkas prematurely would be “the most violent act undertaken against the United States Senate, violent against the institution of the Senate, and its time-honored traditions, since November of 2013 when Harry Reid nuked – deployed – the nuclear option.”
Lee was referencing the then-majority leader lowering the cloture threshold for judicial nominees to a simple majority rather than a two-thirds supermajority.
“I’m very grateful to Speaker Johnson for his bold willingness to delay this,” Lee added. “We don’t want this to come over on the eve of the moment when the members might be operating under the influence of jet fuel intoxication.”
McConnell said last week he expected his rival Schumer (D-NY) to move against the articles after procedurally swearing in senators as jurors.
Schumer, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security have all dismissed the proceedings as a political stunt.
Mayorkas is only the second Cabinet official in US history to be impeached.
In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap resigned the same day he was impeached for corruption. The Senate acquitted him months later in a trial.
