[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 64 (Monday, April 15, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2725-S2726]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Mayorkas Impeachment

  Madam President, I would like to speak on an unrelated topic now--
about the partisan charade House Republicans have made of the 
impeachment process.
  The two impeachment articles filed against Secretary Mayorkas are 
nothing more than an attempt to politicize this solemn constitutional 
tool to distract from the very real fact that the House Republicans are 
struggling to govern.
  The Senate only has the power to convict, remove, and disqualify 
officers whose conduct meets the constitutional standard for 
impeachment. Listen to the standard very closely as spelled out in the 
Constitution: ``treason, bribery, or other high crimes and 
misdemeanors.'' Neither article that

[[Page S2726]]

we have been in receipt of from the House of Representatives contains 
any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has been guilty of any of those 
specific elements in the Constitution or that he has failed in the 
exercise of his duties. Instead, the Articles of Impeachment sent to us 
by the House of Representatives lay out policy disputes through 
regurgitation of Republican talking points on immigration.
  It is simply not a constitutional crime worthy of impeachment for the 
current President and Secretary of Homeland Security to implement 
immigration policies that are entirely within the limits of the law and 
the discretion of the executive branch.
  The articles sent to us by the House Republicans claim that the 
Secretary has willfully and systematically refused to comply with the 
law because he failed to detain every individual who crossed the 
border. Remember that standard--he failed to detain every individual 
who crossed the border. The simple fact of the matter is, all 
Presidents, Republican and Democrat, would be found guilty under those 
elements.
  Existing law does not require the DHS Secretary to detain every 
person who crosses the border. Congress left it to the discretion of 
each administration to decide how best to use their limited resources 
to implement immigration policy.
  The articles also attack the Secretary's use of discretion to decide 
who to arrest and remove from the United States even though the Supreme 
Court has routinely upheld these discretionary decisions.
  I think it is outrageous to allege that Secretary Mayorkas's 
decisions to reverse Trump policy ``breached the public trust.'' A 
decision to change a previous administration's positions is 
fundamentally a policy decision, not a matter of trust.
  If congressional Republicans are genuinely interested in improving 
the situation at the border, I have a suggestion. Why don't we put 
together a bipartisan group of Senators? Why don't we let the 
Republicans choose their participant in that? Why don't they consider 
someone like James Lankford, the Senator from Oklahoma--conservative, 
highly respected? Why don't they have James Lankford meet with at least 
one other Senator, a Democrat--maybe Chris Murphy of Connecticut--and 
then perhaps Kyrsten Sinema, an Independent? Why don't the three of 
them put together a proposal to make changes--significant policy 
changes--on the border to give the President more authority to stop the 
crisis we face? Why don't we call that for consideration on the floor 
of the Senate, and why don't the Republicans back that?
  That is exactly what happened. We have been through this exercise. 
James Lankford--and I respect him very much--did what he was asked to 
do: represent the Republican side of the aisle and move forward with a 
proposal that is bipartisan. We have to be bipartisan in the Senate. We 
need 60 votes for anything serious. We have a 51-to-49 Democratic 
majority. Bipartisanship was built into this package of compromises, 
but what happened? Why didn't that become the law of the land? Why 
didn't that become the change in the border policy that we are all 
looking for? The reason is one man. His name is Donald Trump, and he 
came out publicly and said: I am instructing my followers to kill this 
bipartisan effort from Senator Lankford on the Republican side. And 
then former President Trump said: You are going to hear from people 
that they want to blame me. Go ahead and blame me for stopping this 
effort of border reform.

  Well, I am blaming him.
  Now we have this exercise against Mayorkas instead of a constructive 
bipartisan exercise that Senator Lankford, a respected conservative 
Republican, Senator Murphy, a Democrat, and Senator Sinema, an 
Independent, put together and brought to the floor of the Senate. That 
is how you change the policy, not with some sham process of 
consideration for impeachment that is not warranted.
  Unfortunately, the vast majority of Republicans recently blocked a 
bipartisan border bill that I just described. Despite repeatedly 
referring to the border as a crisis, congressional Republicans' 
opposition was based purely on Donald Trump's insistence that Congress 
not pass immigration legislation. He wants to use it as a campaign 
issue in November. He doesn't want a solution--a bipartisan solution--
that perhaps Joe Biden would get some credit for, so he stopped the 
whole process and stopped the bipartisanship.
  This partisan hackery is not lost on me or the American people. 
Instead of doing their job and working to find legislative solutions to 
complex and challenging problems, too many Republicans have decided 
that the impeachment of a Cabinet official for actually doing his job 
is a better exercise of time.
  The Framers anticipated that partisan politics would result in 
meritless impeachment efforts like this one and designed the 
Constitution to withstand the baseless efforts. During the 
constitutional convention, the Framers explicitly--explicitly--rejected 
a proposal to include ``maladministration''--they used that word--as an 
impeachable offense, despite its use in many State constitutions at the 
time.
  Second, the division of impeachment power between the House of 
Representatives and the Senate was meant as a safeguard against the 
danger of impeachment inevitably becoming politicalized.
  In Federalist 66, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the division of 
impeachment powers between the House and the Senate ``guards against 
the danger of persecution, from the prevalency of a factious spirit in 
either of those branches.'' To translate that into 21st century terms, 
what he is saying is: We want to stop them from using impeachment for 
politics. In order for the Senate to uphold the Constitution and 
fulfill its impeachment obligations, it must dispose of these baseless 
impeachment articles that we receive from the House.
  The Constitution provides that ``[t]he Senate shall have the sole 
Power to try all Impeachments'' and places very limited requirements on 
how we are to exercise that authority. Chief Justice Rehnquist noted 
during the impeachment trial of then-President Clinton that ``the 
Senate is not simply a jury; it is a court in this case [of 
impeachment].''
  Both the House and Senate have a history of quickly disposing of 
impeachment investigations and impeachment articles that do not meet 
the standard of high crime or misdemeanor. This one doesn't.
  In the 72nd Congress, two impeachment resolutions were offered 
against President Herbert Hoover. After the reading of the resolution 
was completed, the House successfully moved, by an overwhelming vote, 
to table the impeachment articles. Since 1986, the Senate has 
considered motions to dismiss brought by either the impeached officer 
or a Senator in six impeachments and has twice dismissed impeachment 
articles in the past. So to say this has never been done is just not 
true. We should follow that example.
  I urge my colleagues to uphold the Constitution and the intentions of 
the Framers and quickly dispose of these unjustifiable Articles of 
Impeachment.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.