(NewsNation) — Although House Republicans were initially expected to deliver the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday, they now plan on doing so Monday.
“To ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week,” a spokesperson for GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement Tuesday. “There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial.“
GOP senators told NewsNation that this would give them more time to push Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, to hold an “actual, serious” trial. Since many senators plan on leaving Washington, D.C., for the weekend on Thursday, beginning the trial that day would mess up some Republican senators’ scheduled events, the lawmakers said.
However, with a Democratic majority in the Senate, it was already unlikely that the trial would have been allowed to go forward at all. Democrats, who have largely decried the Mayorkas impeachment as a “partisan exercise” from the very beginning, have enough members to hold a vote and table it.
“It’s a sham impeachment on the part of the House,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, said. “So I hope that we will deal with it as expeditious as possible.”
Republicans, on the other hand, say that whether Democrats agree with the impeachment or not, the House voted for it, so it’s the Senate’s obligation to at least listen to the evidence.
“The only way you can get to the evidence, the only way you can get to a meaningful decision other than just tabling the matter … is through a trial,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said.
In February, Mayorkas became the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in roughly 150 years. House Republicans introduced two articles of impeachment: one that alleges Mayorkas failed to enforce immigration laws and another saying that he lied to Congress under oath when he said the border is “operationally secure.”
Mayorkas, who has denied these claims, issued a statement after the vote to impeach him.
“House Republicans will be remembered by history for trampling on the Constitution for political gain rather than working to solve the serious challenges at our border,” Mayorkas said at the time.
