Questions Remain About How Schumer Will Handle Mayorkas Impeachment

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) departs from the Senate Chambers in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on March 14, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Senate rules governing impeachment trials specify the day and time that such a procedure is to begin, but intense speculation continues behind the scenes about what Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) may do after April 10.

That’s the day that 11 House impeachment managers will formally present to the Senate two counts of impeachment approved on Feb. 13 by the lower chamber of Congress against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Shortly after the House vote, Mr. Schumer declared the impeachment a “sham,” but he has been silent since then on what he will do after House managers officially inform the Senate.

A spokesman for the New York Democrat didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Senate rules on impeachment require that “upon such articles being presented to the Senate, the Senate shall, at 1 o'clock afternoon of the day [Sunday excepted] following such presentation, or sooner if ordered by the Senate, proceed to the consideration of such articles and shall continue in session from day to day [Sundays excepted] after the trial shall commence [unless otherwise ordered by the Senate] until final judgment shall be rendered, and so much longer as may, in its judgment, be needful.”

The current Senate impeachment rules were adopted in 1986. The word “shall” appears in the text 107 times across nine pages. Senate rules can be changed with a simple majority vote, and they can be suspended with a two-thirds majority.

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One provision of the rules that could be used to delay the trial is the appointment of an evidentiary committee of senators charged by a Senate vote “to receive evidence and take testimony at such times and places as the committee may determine, and for such purpose the committee so appointed and the chairman thereof, to be elected by the committee, shall [unless otherwise ordered by the Senate] exercise all the powers and functions conferred upon the Senate and the Presiding Officer of the Senate, respectively, under the rules of procedure and practice in the Senate when sitting on impeachment trials.”

But with the border crisis being the leading or second-most concerning issue for majorities of voters, according to Gallup and other polls, the evidentiary committee approach would have the disadvantage for Democrats of keeping impeachment of President Joe Biden’s right-hand man on immigration in the news for months on end.

Such a prospect could especially be a problem for Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), incumbents facing reelection in November in red states.

Avoiding Trial

Senate Republicans are concerned that Mr. Schumer may somehow contrive to table the impeachment process or dismiss the House action outright.

In a Feb. 20 letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 13 Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said they believe, based on briefings by Mr. McConnell’s staff, that Mr. Schumer and Senate Democrats “intend to dispense with the articles of impeachment by simply tabling both individually. This is an action rarely contemplated and never taken by the U.S. Senate in the history of our republic.”

One of the signers of the letter, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), told The Epoch Times that “as the impeachment process moves to the Senate, Leader Schumer would like nothing more than to table this issue and once again sweep Biden’s border crisis under the rug. But we would be neglecting our constitutional duties to table the articles of impeachment without so much as hearing a single argument. Secretary Mayorkas serves the American people and must face full accountability for his failings.”

Constitutional scholar Hans von Spakovsky has no doubt the Mayorkas impeachment trial must be convened.

“If Senator Schumer refuses to hold an impeachment trial, he will be blatantly violating the Senate’s own parliamentary rules that say the Senate ’shall' conduct a trial when it receives an impeachment resolution from the House,” he told The Epoch Times. “And he will be violating his sworn duties under the Constitution as the leader of the Senate.”

Rachel Bovard, former executive director of the Senate Republican Steering Committee, expects Mr. Schumer or another Senate Democrat to move to table the Mayorkas matter as soon as the trial is convened.

President Joe Biden (L) listens as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at the Brownsville Station during a visit to the U.S.–Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 29, 2024. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

“A motion to table is a privileged motion and is considered with a 51-vote threshold and it’s not debatable,” Ms. Bovard, who was deeply involved in the Trump impeachment processes, told The Epoch Times. She is now vice president for programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

“Now it would be unprecedented, as I don’t think anyone has ever done this. You could argue, too, that it is out of order because what the Senate’s rules basically say is you have to swear in jurors and hold a trial. Doesn’t say how long the trial has to be and you can make the motion to dismiss the charges in the context of the trial,” she said. “But there is simply no precedent for not even swearing the jurors in and not beginning the trial.”

Past Impeachments

Throughout American history, the House has impeached 20 executive and judicial branch officials, including three presidents—Andrew Johnson following the Civil War, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2020 and again in 2021, according to legal analysts.

Fourteen of the impeachments involved federal judges, including one Supreme Court justice, Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805. Justice Chase was acquitted by the Senate.

The Senate has never upheld the impeachment of a chief executive.

Three of the 14 impeached federal judges resigned before their Senate trial.

Overall, the required two-thirds of the Senate has voted to convict eight times and failed to do so on nine occasions.

The impeachment counts approved by the House cited Mr. Mayorkas’s failure to address the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States by repeatedly ignoring or reversing laws adopted by Congress and instructing Department of Homeland Security employees to ignore the law.

Mr. Mayorkas was also cited for obstructing congressional oversight and lying to Congress.

Appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Democratic Senate in 2021, Mr. Mayorkas was impeached by a vote of 214–213, with all but three Republicans voting in favor and all Democrats opposing the action.

The lower chamber burst into applause after the result was announced.

Mr. Mayorkas is only the second presidential Cabinet member to be impeached. The first, Secretary of War George Belknap, resigned in 1876 after the House passed five counts of impeachment against him. The Senate failed to convict Mr. Belknap, who was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant.