Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) vowed to impeach President Joe Biden’s border chief on Wednesday after the first vote’s dramatic failure the night before.
“Last night was a setback, but democracy is messy,” he told reporters after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas dodged impeachment. “We will pass those articles of impeachment.”
Yet House Republicans should not hold out hope for a trial in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has several options to delay or outright dismiss what Democrats believe is a politically motivated investigation.
Schumer has yet to say how he would handle the impeachment articles, but the preference of his leadership team is clearly to dismiss the trial.
“Sen. Schumer’s going to decide what to do, but it certainly is, from where I sit, just a political process,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, told the Washington Examiner.
“I’m fine with moving to dismiss it, personally, because I think it’s just a political sham, unfortunately — just continues the chaos in the House, where they have no interest in governing,” Stabenow said.
The Republican-led House failed to impeach Mayorkas on Tuesday, falling a single vote shy due to the surprise appearance of Rep. Al Green (D-TX), wheeled into the House chamber fresh out of the surgery room.
Johnson can salvage that vote with a second attempt once House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) returns to Washington as soon as next week. There is little appetite, however, to try the nation’s border chief in the Senate, something Democrats fear would give more oxygen to Republican attacks on the Biden administration.
The decision would be another extraordinary development in the bitter political saga. Mayorkas, who stands accused of willfully refusing to enforce the law, is only the second Cabinet official to be impeached by the House.
And House Republicans bypassed the Judiciary Committee, where impeachment articles normally originate, in conducting their investigation into Mayorkas.
Republicans argue that opting out of a Senate trial would further undermine norms on what was once a rarely used tool by Congress.
“That’s bad for the system,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, who noted the Senate held trials for former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments.
“I thought Trump was politicized,” Graham added. “They think this is politicized. It doesn’t matter what we think — there’s a way to dispose of it where we have an orderly system rather than just using political power to dispose of it.”
But Democrats believe the Constitution gives wiggle room because it hands the Senate the “sole power” to conduct trials but not as an overt requirement.
The question is whether centrist Democrats would go along with the simple majority vote needed for a motion to dismiss.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), one of those centrists, has already predicted the votes are there in a chamber Democrats control with a threadbare, one-seat majority. Senate Republicans have been cool to the idea of impeachment, viewing it as a distraction, but would likely oppose a move to sink the trial itself.
“We would dismiss it, yes,” said Manchin, who told the Washington Examiner he would vote in favor. “I think there’s the votes for that. I just want to get rid of it as quick as possible. You go down that path, that’s a slippery slope. You would never stop.”
Nonetheless, the whip count is still fluid, with other vulnerable Democrats noncommittal. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who is up for reelection in November, repeatedly declined to say if he would vote with Manchin.
“The House shouldn’t even allow it to get to us,” Casey told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “They should work on border policy and get serious instead of being lap dogs for Donald Trump.”
Another option, one that could protect Casey and others from taking a difficult vote, would be to refer the impeachment articles to a special committee that would delay its findings, perhaps until after Election Day. A third option would be raising a point of order, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) attempted to do during Trump’s second impeachment.
Scuttling an impeachment trial would cap off a remarkable split screen over the last several weeks, in which House Republicans laid the groundwork for Mayorkas’s impeachment while Senate Republicans sat at the negotiating table with him on a border deal.
Republicans emphasize that Mayorkas only facilitated the border talks, which died in the Senate on Tuesday, while White House officials brokered the deal’s provisions. But Democrats have used his involvement to portray him as a constructive force in solving the border crisis.
It would also mark an end to the main legislative outlet Republicans have used to vent their anger at Biden over the border crisis, a problem that has proven politically perilous for the president amid a record-breaking influx of immigrants.
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Johnson already has appointed the House impeachment managers who would present the case for conviction to the Senate, but Democrats want to deny them that opportunity altogether.
“Whatever causes the least activity over here because it’s so stupid,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said of his view on dismissal.
