Senate Shoots Down Both Mayorkas Impeachment Articles
The Senate voted to dismiss both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on a party-line vote that saw Democrats voting to shut the process down and deny Republicans the spectacle of a lengthy Senate trial.
House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas over the influx of migrants at the southern border back in February, the second time a Cabinet member has been impeached in U.S. history, with the only other time happening almost 150 years ago.
The vote occurred along party lines with lawmakers voting 51-49 to dismiss the two articles of impeachment. Soon after, the Senate voted to end the impeachment trial as well by the same vote margin.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed during his speech on the floor that the House passed “the least legitimate, least substantive and most politicized impeachment trial ever in the history of the United States.”
“The charges brought against Secretary Mayorkas fail to meet the high standards of high crimes and misdemeanors. To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future,” Schumer claimed.
Schumer asserted that the charges were “unconstitutional” because they did not rise “to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.”
Senate Republicans attempted to block the motions for dismissal but were unsuccessful. Per The Hill:
Schumer moved to quash the charges immediately after first-term Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) objected to a unanimous consent request by Schumer to give senators time to debate the trial procedure and to consider resolutions sponsored by Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) to either hold a full trial or send the impeachment to a special committee for thorough review.
Schmitt was protesting Schumer’s plan to eventually move to dismiss the impeachment after defeating the motions to hold a trial or refer it to committee.
Cruz tried to block Schumer’s move to dismiss the charges by offering a motion to send the Senate into a private session to debate the constitutionality of the impeachment, but Democrats voted it down.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
