House GOP Sends VRY SRS Mayorkas Impeachment To Senate For VRY SRS Trial
Wait, don't dismiss it yet, Sen. Schumer, I'm still typing!
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives can’t agree on anything, and is on the verge of defenestrating Speaker Mike Johnson, but in a rare show of party unity, House Goopers scraped up enough votes yesterday to formally send the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate for trial. Mayorkas is charged with two counts of Doing Bad Things, namely that he has “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration law, at least not as House Republicans see it.
Also, he supposedly committed a “breach of public trust” by saying the US border with Mexico is “secure,” when you can just turn on Fox News and see that there is not a wall reaching to the planet’s ionosphere to keep people out. After all, “secure” only means what Republicans want it to mean.
After the vote Tuesday, the very impressive Impeachment Managers walked the papers over to the Senate, where, the AP reports,
The Senate sergeant-at-arms, the chamber’s top security official, called the session to order with a “hear ye! hear ye!” and a notice that “all persons are commanded to keep silence, on pain of imprisonment.”
The House Homeland Security Committee chairman, Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who is one of the impeachment managers, read the articles aloud as most senators sat in their seats, following along with their own paper copies.
One of the House impeachment managers is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who somehow managed to make it through the reading of the charges without even once shouting out anything rude, so thank goodness we were spared the spectacle of one of the “prosecutors” getting arrested.
Now that the trial is in the Senate’s hands, Democrats may just dismiss the whole mess today, once all the senators are sworn in as jurors. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) could introduce a motion to dismiss or table the articles right away, which wouldn’t be much of a surprise considering that he’s already called the impeachment a “nakedly partisan” exercise by Republicans.
Today, Schumer again said the charges simply didn’t meet the constitutional bar for removing a cabinet secretary by impeachment, because there’s no high crimes or misdemeanors, just Republican dissatisfaction with policy.
"To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future. For the sake of the Senate's integrity, and to protect impeachment for those rare cases we truly need it, senators should dismiss today's charges," he said.
Sen Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), finding himself without any crowds of insurrectionists to encourage or run away from, told NBC News that if this very serious impeachment doesn’t get a full trial, then the Constitution is finished, game over, man, GAME OVER: "If they do what they say they're gonna do here, this will be the end of the impeachment. They're basically destroying impeachment and the Constitution," Hawley quacked.
Here’s the exciting video of the procedings; as we type, the senators are being sworn in as jurors, four at a time, and they’re only in the first half of the alphabet so far.
In conclusion, for a day when the Constitution is supposedly in peril, things seem to be going along calmly enough.
Update: Schumer has called for an hour for Republicans to make motions for trial rules, after which he intends to hold debate and voting on whether to dismiss the charges. This will take a while, but it might be sort of interesting. Hawley has already objected that any vote to dismiss would burn the Constitution to the ground, unlike, say, trying to throw out an entire election. That was fine.
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MAYBE MITCH SIMPLY FORGOT?
The NY Times: "Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the Senate, slammed Mr. Schumer’s plans to dismiss the case.
“Never before has the Senate agreed to a motion to table articles of impeachment,” Mr. McConnell said. “Not for an officer of either party. Not once.”
He added that “it would be beneath the Senate’s dignity to shrug off our clear responsibility and fail to give the charges we’ll hear today the thorough consideration they deserve.”
Mr. McConnell did not mention that he voted in favor of an unsuccessful effort in 2021 to dismiss a second impeachment case against Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol before the Senate held a trial."
People died for the laws they’re making a joke out of.