McConnell’s Trash Reason Why Senate Should Have Held Impeachment Trial

The Senate shot down House Republicans’ attempt to remove Secretary of Homeland Security Antonio Mayorkas from office Wednesday, adjourning his impeachment trial by a 51-49 vote, along party lines. 

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was not happy, claiming that the upper chamber  is setting “a very unfortunate precedent here.” 

“It doesn’t make any difference whether our friends on the other side thought he should have been impeached or not. He was,” McConnell said, taking a shot at the Democratic Party. “And by doing what we just did, we have in effect ignored the directions of the House, which were to have a trial. No evidence, no procedure—this is a day that’s not a proud day in the history of the Senate.” 

BREAKING: The Senate has voted 51-49 to adjourn the impeachment trial of Sec. Mayorkas, ending the impeachment. pic.twitter.com/Sel3BLFZD0

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 17, 2024

McConnell’s comments are completely disingenuous. House Republicans’ reasoning for impeaching Mayorkas is specious at best, as Matt Ford wrote for The New Republic in January, and is clearly aimed at impressing Donald Trump. The two articles put forth by the GOP, “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust,” do not rise to anything resembling a high crime or a misdemeanor, as is stated in the Constitution. The charges that Republicans made essentially amounted to policy differences between themselves and the Biden administration. 

Republicans know it’s bogus themselves. Representative French Hill couldn’t even offer any examples of Mayorkas’s guilt to a friendly Fox News audience in February, spewing a word salad about Joe Biden paying a public relations price for failing to “shut the border.” Former Representative Ken Buck also thought impeaching Mayorkas was pointless, as he told Newsmax in February. 

And as for the policy differences on border security and immigration, they are based on a misguided right-wing myth, fueled by breathless media coverage, that the southern U.S. border is being overrun with migrants bringing crime, with no moves to stop it. If that were true, or more importantly, if Republicans actually believed it to be true, they would have agreed to pass the bipartisan border security bill in January instead of shooting it down at Donald Trump’s behest. At the time, McConnell reportedly even told his fellow Republican senators that a deal could undermine Trump’s reelection campaign.

In reality, the impeachment of Mayorkas is another example that Republican rhetoric over the southern U.S. border is just political theater designed to hurt Biden and the Democratic Party. The same fear-mongering was trotted out in previous elections and failed. How will it work this time around?