Last week, the Senate rightfully shut down MAGA House Republicans’ baseless impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. MAGA House Republicans spent the past year investigating the Secretary, and could not present a single shred of evidence whatsoever of high crimes or misdemeanors, yet proceeded with voting to impeach the Secretary anyway. The impeachment was nothing but a pathetic attempt to score political points with their MAGA base, distract from Donald Trump’s 88 criminal charges, and help him return to the White House in 2024. But since the Mayorkas impeachment has finally gone up in flames, the same Republicans who attempted to lead the circus are the only ones with egg on their faces.
The Los Angeles Times (Opinion): Hapless House Republicans Weaponized Impeachment. It Backfired.
- “Of course, that’s the opposite of the achievement they promised two years ago, ahead of the midterm elections that gave them control of the House. Back then, some chest-beaters were vowing to impeach President Biden as well as members of his Cabinet, starting with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the administration’s border security czar, and sweeping up Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray (a Donald Trump holdover, by the way), Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Lord knows who else. They managed, just, to impeach Mayorkas on their second attempt — more on that later. But all in all, they’ve failed spectacularly. Fortunately.”
- “With Mayorkas, at least they gave dear leader Trump and the party’s MAGA base something. But now they’re essentially 0 for 2.”
- “The two well-deserved Trump impeachments are so different from Mayorkas’ and the Biden attempt they shouldn’t even be called tit for tat. They’re apples and oranges. And sour grapes.”
The Washington Post (Opinion): A Rotten Week For MAGA Republicans’ Feeble Stunts.
- “MAGA House Republicans would rather do anything but their jobs. They would rather indulge right-wing media consumers with baseless impeachments, motions to vacate the speaker’s chair (again!), fruitless hearings and parroting Russian propaganda. None of these activities serves the interests of the voters; none improves U.S. national security. For these minions of Donald Trump, chaos and paralysis appear to be the goal.”
- “When Republicans blatantly lie, disregard their oaths and — to borrow a phrase — weaponize government, Democrats have an obligation to call them out. That entails refusing to take Republican antics seriously. When hearings and investigations obviously lack good faith, the Democrats can uphold the stature of Congress by simply walking away and refusing to play these games.”
- “For good measure last week, the incomparable Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, took a verbal sledgehammer to Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), derided even by his own side for utterly failing to come up with anything remotely incriminating in his strictly partisan impeachment inquiry into President Biden. The inquiry has been repeatedly and thoroughly discredited. Even now, Comer cannot figure out what ‘crime’ he is investigating. And further still, Comer cannot admit failure.”
Slate: It Was Supposed to Be a Shocking Impeachment. Folks, It Fizzled.
- “The impeachment of Mayorkas originated as a way to appease the unruly House Republicans who approached this Congress with a small majority but a huge appetite for partisan warfare.
- “Eventually, Republicans ran out of motions and, after three hours, the impeachment trial was over. Senators streamed out of the chamber to celebrate the outcome or rail against the result. In a brief press conference, Schumer discussed how important it was to short-circuit the trial. ‘We felt very strongly that we had to set a precedent that impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements.’ In contrast, Josh Hawley of Missouri mourned afterward that ‘this is akin to blowing up the filibuster in terms of the precedent it sets.’ Perhaps the most succinct verdict came from Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut when asked how Mayorkas’ trial compared to his experience sitting through the two impeachments of Donald Trump in 2020 and 2021. ‘I don’t think this one will make my memoirs,’ he said.”
The Hill: GOP Impeachment Efforts Hit Brick Wall.
- “Republican impeachment efforts against President Biden and his Cabinet appear to have hit a brick wall after the Senate swiftly dismissed articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
- Senators dismissed a pair of impeachment articles Wednesday after less than three hours of procedural bickering, closing out the House GOP’s yearlong effort to oust Mayorkas with a whimper.”
The New York Daily News Editorial Board: No Debate About It: A Fitting End To The Ridiculous Impeachment Of Alejandro Mayorkas.
- “The 49 Senate Republicans spent Wednesday afternoon furiously sputtering that they weren’t allowed to debate if Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, duly and formally impeached by the House, should be tried in the upper chamber. It’s their own fault, having blocked a chance to engage in several hours of debate, so they have nothing to complain about.”
- “But that is if the impeachment itself is valid and in the case of the Mayorkas, it is not. The Republicans and their puppet master, Donald Trump, are ginning up the machine against immigration and making Mayorkas their whipping boy for chaos at the border.”
- “There is no evidence against Mayorkas on any of these grounds. There are policy differences absolutely, but no crimes. The reasonable solution would be for the Senate to just dismiss the phony impeachment and dispense with any trial.”
New York Magazine: The Mayorkas Impeachment Trial Was a Joke.
- “But even given the broadest possible definition of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ the obedience shown by Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the policies Joe Biden has laid out is far from being an impeachable offense.”
The Boulder Daily Camera Editorial Board: Sham Impeachment Of Mayorkas Rightly Dismissed By The U.S. Senate.
- “Of course Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, should not have been impeached, and good on the United States Senate this week for dismissing the trumped-up charges against him before his trial even got underway. He committed no high crimes nor misdemeanors in carrying out his duties, which, whether or not the House Republicans who forced the issue, or the Senate Republicans who voted along party lines, like it, involve carrying out the policies of the president.”
- “Mayorkas was accused of no corruption. He is simply carrying out the immigration policies, imperfect though they may be, of the president he was sworn into [sic] serve. Let’s never see this kind of impeachment circus in the Senate again.”
CNN: Senate Kills The Articles Of Impeachment Against Alejandro Mayorkas.
- “There was less drama in the upper chamber, where the proceedings ended a few hours after they began following votes, mostly along party lines, to declare unconstitutional the two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas – one for ‘willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law’ and another for ‘breach of public trust.’”
- “The blink-and-you-missed it Senate trial marked the culmination of a mostly failed political gambit hatched by House Republicans seeking to cast the limelight on the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border ahead of the general election. But the merits of the case they hoped to bring to the Senate were widely seen as lacking substance and, to some, a distraction from other election year messaging. House GOP claims that Mayorkas, the first Latino and immigrant to hold the job, committed high crimes and misdemeanors never passed muster with constitutional experts, who said the evidence against him failed to clear that high bar.”
The Guardian: House Republicans’ Bid To Impeach Alejandro Mayorkas Fails In US Senate.
- “Senate Democrats on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment case brought by House Republicans against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, on grounds that the charges failed to meet the bar of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ outlined in the constitution as a basis for removing an official from office.”
- “Constitutional scholars, including conservative legal experts, have said the Republicans’ impeachment case is deeply flawed and weakens Congress’s most powerful tool for holding despots and delinquents to account.”
The Washington Post: The Politics Of The Swiftly Dismissed Mayorkas Impeachment Trial.
- “But the GOP’s impeachment effort was troubled from the start — in ways that sharply undercut the claim that Democrats are derelict in shrugging off an impeachment trial. Even many Republicans said Mayorkas’s actions weren’t impeachable, and the party wound up lacking complete unity in both chambers in historic ways.”
- “The handful of GOP defections undersell just how much concern there was about what their party was doing. Several GOP senators who voted against dismissing the charges nonetheless had previously labeled the whole thing a waste of time. They said the House hadn’t shown that Mayorkas actually did anything impeachable. They said Mayorkas was basically just carrying out the administration’s policy.”
- “One called it ‘the worst, dumbest exercise and use of time.’ Another said the House GOP was ‘targeting a member of the administration without doing their homework.’ A third said the House had ‘nothing.’”