Senate Republicans have said that if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tables or dismisses impeachment charges against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, it will ravage the upper chamber’s already declining authority by “nuking the Constitution.”
That fear is one of two at the heart of the GOP lawmakers’ intensive nearly week-long push to pressure Mr. Schumer into not interfering with what would be only the second Senate impeachment trial of a presidential Cabinet member in U.S. history.
Former Secretary of the Army George Belknap was the first in 1876.
The second worry repeatedly voiced by the Republicans is that failing to convene the Mayorkas trial and allow it to be completed as required by the Constitution will embolden future presidents and their appointees to refuse to enforce laws to which they object.
“One reason Secretary Mayorkas was impeached was his refusal to enforce the law as it is written, resulting in the deaths of Americans and the destruction of our southern border," Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told The Epoch Times.
“Failure to hold him accountable gives a clear signal to future presidents and public servants that our laws are optional and their oaths of office are suggestions. They are not.”
Similarly, Heritage Foundation constitutional scholar Hans von Spakovsky told The Epoch Times that “if Senator Schumer refuses to carry out his duty to hold an impeachment trial, it will be another sign of his contemptuous view of the Constitution and his disregard of his oath of office.”
“He is also denying reality when he claims this impeachment is over a difference in immigration policy,” he said.
“It is over Mayorkas violating specific federal immigration statutes and lying to Congress, causing the worst border and national security crisis in American history.
“If Schumer fails to take action, he will be telling the public that he believes his political allies are above the law.”
Together, the fears about the Mayorkas impeachment trial are the latest in a long string of what Republicans have said are corrosive changes that Senate Democrats have adopted since 2013, when, led by Harry Reid (D-Nev.), they gutted the filibuster in judicial confirmations.
“Senate Democrats are preparing to nuke the Constitution of the United States itself, the impeachment clause, which every single time the Senate has had jurisdiction and the person has been in office, the Senate has held a trial,” he said.
“If Senate Democrats proceed to table this, they will blow up that precedent.”
He then predicted that if voters reelect former President Donald Trump in November, Republicans retake the Senate majority, and Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives, House Democrats will soon thereafter impeach the new chief executive, possibly multiple times.
“And, if and when those impeachment articles come over to the Senate, if Senate Democrats next week dismiss this [Mayorkas] impeachment, I’m telling you right now Senate Republicans will do the same thing to any impeachment that comes over from the House,” Mr. Cruz said.
“What Senate Democrats will have effectively done is eliminated the Senate’s power of impeachment any time the Senate is the same party as the president.
“When House Democrats impeached Donald Trump the first time, they sent over articles of impeachment to the Senate and Senate Republicans could have played these games, tabled the articles, and said ‘we’re going to shirk our constitutional duties, we’re not going to have a trial, but we didn’t.”
“Think of it this way: Over time, we’ve seen the Senate gradually whittling away its own authority and with it, its own obligations,” he said.
“On the legislative calendar, we’ve seen the Senate, and the House, sadly transferring a disproportionate share of our law-making authority over to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in the executive branch.
“On the executive calendar side, we’ve seen ourselves whittle down the number and the portion of presidential appointees that are subject to Senate confirmation.
“We'll now have a trifecta, a trifecta if we don’t undertake this task where we narrow down our constitutional duties.”
When asked by The Epoch Times whether he believes the Senate’s decline in authority since 2013 effectively means Congress is no longer “the first branch” as intended by the authors of the Constitution, Mr. Lee said he does.
“Look, it was surprising to no one, it was a secret to no one that the most dangerous branch of government was then, is now, has always been, was always intended to be the Article One branch, the legislative branch, where we work,” he said.
“Why? Because we have one branch that makes the law, we have one branch that enforces the law—or is supposed to—the same laws passed by the legislative branch, and a third branch that interprets the law.
“Those are subservient to the dominant role of making the law. We set the policy, we decide what should be, the executive branch enforces that, and then in the rearview mirror the courts look at things and say, ‘This is what it means.’”
The Utah Republican also noted that in the ultimate measure of accountability, voters can fire all 435 members of the House of Representatives every two years and a third of the 100 members of the Senate every two years.
“There is a reason for this, and that’s what makes it that much more dangerous when we relinquish, we shun, we run from our obligations just for the sake of ease, for the sake of avoidance of criticism,” he said.
“That’s the road to tyranny, folks; whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative, that ought to scare you to death.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) told the assembled journalists that “this is not like some amendment on an appropriations bill; this is the United States Constitution and 240-plus years of precedent.”
Mr. Schmitt continued, arguing that “short of ending the filibuster, there is nothing more you can do to the United States Senate to diminish its responsibilities.”
“This is it, impeachment is actually something we are supposed to do. So there ought to be a real cost to Chuck Schumer,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, “There is nothing complicated about this; either you believe in the Constitution or you don’t.”
“You can see the explosion from the end of the Trump administration where we had the border closed and then the explosion and the widening gap as President Biden allowed Title 42 to expire,” Mr. Johnson said.
Also on April 10, Mr. Cruz offered a unanimous consent motion to establish an evidentiary committee to conduct the impeachment trial, as provided by Senate rules, but it was also blocked by Senate Democrats.
Allison Biosatti, Mr. Schumer’s national press secretary, did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
