House Republicans will send their articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate early next month — paving the way for a long-coming showdown in the upper chamber.
Speaker Mike Johnson and the 11 Republican impeachment managers said in a Thursday letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that they will present the articles to the Senate on April 10, shortly after Congress returns from its current two-week break. In the letter, they also urged him to “expeditiously” schedule a trial.
That means the long-simmering Senate debate over what to do with those impeachment articles will soon come to a head. Those narrowly passed the House in February after three Republicans sided with Democrats, opposing the impeachment of the first Cabinet official since 1876.
“We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional obligation to hold this trial. … To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve,” Republicans wrote in the letter.
Schumer has not said whether he’d support a motion to dismiss the trial, but he has repeatedly dubbed the Mayorkas impeachment a sham. Even if the Senate were to go through an impeachment trial for Mayorkas, the chances of conviction are near zero given it requires a two-thirds threshold.
It’s virtually certain all Senate Democrats would vote to acquit Mayorkas – and given skepticism from some centrist Republicans, there’s a chance that vote could be bipartisan.
Republicans impeached Mayorkas on charges of betraying the public trust and refusing to comply with the law, citing his handling of the border. The administration, Democrats and even some GOP-aligned legal experts said that didn’t meet the bar of high crimes and misdemeanors spelled out in the Constitution.
