Call for McConnell to Initiate Mayorkas Impeachment Trial

Some Senate conservatives are demanding that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., help push for a full impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, as reported by Axios.

Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and 11 GOP colleagues on Tuesday planned to send a letter to McConnell asking that the chamber “fully engage our Constitutional duty and hold a trial.”

The U.S. House voted a week ago to impeach Mayorkas for failure to police the southern border amid a record-setting migrant crisis.

The Senate, unlike the House, is controlled by the Democrats.

The New York Times on Wednesday reported that Senate leaders plan to move quickly to reject the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, setting up a speedy trial in hopes of preventing House Republicans from using the platform to expose the Biden administration’s actions.

In their letter to McConnell, the Republican senators said the efforts by Democrats to dismiss the impeachment articles would be “an action rarely contemplated and never taken by the U.S. Senate,” as reported by Axios.

If the tables were turned, “the opposition would be fierce and the volume from Democrats would be deafening,” the senators added.

Lee told Axios that he and Cruz met with McConnell a week ago, arguing that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., should not be allowed to simply set aside the impeachment articles so quickly.

The parliamentarian, whose job is to interpret Senate rules and precedent, has not yet responded to Lee and Cruz.

Lee told Axios he hopes McConnell and the chamber’s GOP leaders aren’t “complicit in the Democrats’ effort to just table the motion as if this were some childish, sophomoric exercise.”

McConnell last week told CNN that he hadn’t taken a position yet on the Mayorkas trial and whether he would vote to dismiss the charges.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” McConnell told CNN. “So I don’t think we’ll have two endless trials like we’ve had recently.”

McConnell was referring to the two impeachment trials involving former President Donald Trump.

Not all GOP senators are in support of the Mayorkas impeachment trial.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., called it “obviously dead on arrival” and “the worst, dumbest exercise and use of time,” as reported by NBC News.