During proceedings on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate dismissed both articles of impeachment brought forward against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mayorkas was previously impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives in articles alleging that he refused to comply with federal law and violated public trust due to his actions along the southern border. The articles passed by a narrow vote of 214-213, with all Democrats and three Republicans voting against their advancement, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opened Wednesday’s hearing by urging his colleagues to vote against the impeachment articles, claiming that advancing the articles could lead to a dangerous precedent since the articles fail to meet “the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“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 added, according to The Associated Press.
Schumer then offered an agreement to Republican members, which would have allowed for time to debate the vote for dismissing the impeachment articles.
This proposal was rejected after Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) objected due to concerns that the majority leader was attempting to “set hundreds of years of precedent, the Senate, and our very Constitution ablaze.”
“Never before have articles of impeachment been tabled or dismissed when the subject was alive and still in office,” said Schmitt in a statement sent to NBC News.
“The American people deserve to hear all of the facts and we must do our jobs, and I plan to fight to ensure that we do just that.”
After the agreement was rejected, the Senate voted 51-48 to dismiss the first impeachment article, which alleged that Mayorkas participated in “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” as reported by USA Today.
The second impeachment article, which alleged Mayorkas contributed to a “breach of public trust,” was then dismissed by the Senate with a vote of 51-49, per USA Today.
DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement that the Senate’s dismissal of the articles “proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment,” per NBC News.
“It’s time for Congressional Republicans to support the Department’s vital mission instead of wasting time playing political games and standing in the way of commonsense, bipartisan border reforms,” she added.
Additionally, Schumer provided a statement to reporters after the vote and said that the Senate “had to” dismiss the articles, claiming that impeaching the secretary would “degrade government” because the impeachment was seemingly over a policy disagreement.
“What we saw today was a microcosm of this impeachment: hallowed, frivolous, political,” he said, per NBC News.
Despite the dismissal receiving support from some, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) criticized the vote and said, “American people will hold Senate Democrats accountable for this shameful display.”
“By voting unanimously to bypass their constitutional responsibility, every single Senate Democrat has issued their full endorsement of the Biden Administration’s dangerous open border policies. Secretary Mayorkas alongside President Biden has used nearly every tool at his disposal to engineer the greatest humanitarian and national security catastrophe at our borders in American history,” he said in a joint statement with multiple other GOP leaders.
