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Johnson appears to backs off Mayorkas impeachment with surprise postponement

April 10, 2024 | | Print Article

The impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been delayed until at least next week.

In a move that caught impeachment managers by surprise, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) punted on the transmission of the articles against President Joe Biden’s top immigration official which was set to begin Thursday after he was lobbied by Senate Republicans for a postponement.

“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. There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial,” a spokesperson for Johnson said in a statement.

The trial was already in doubt with the Democrat majority solidly behind Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to reject any efforts to hold Mayorkas accountable for the crisis at the border that has led to millions of illegal aliens flooding the country, many of them violent criminals.

Schumer was expected to move quickly to table the impeachment despite the optics of Democrats not caring about an issue that has gained increasing importance with voters of both parties in an election year as blue cities are overrun by illegals.

Mayorkas was impeached on two counts in February, “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and a “breach of public trust,” in a historic move by House Republicans. He was the first cabinet secretary to be impeached for nearly 150 years.

An unnamed source “familiar with the situation” told Fox News Digital that at least ten GOP senators were “actively pressuring” Johnson for the delay to prevent Schumer and his Democrats from tabling the impeachment trial before the weekend and then sending senators home.

According to the source, “The GOP senators discussed their attempts to persuade Johnson during a lunch held at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s headquarters on Tuesday,” Fox News reported, with two of those named being Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Ron. Johnson (R-WI) which as confirmed by their offices.

“I will say there was a strong consensus … to delay this delivery of impeachment so that we can have this discussion because it’s an important discussion to have,” Johnson said. “So, again, that was almost unanimous consensus. We asked anyone to dissent and nobody did.”

The top Senate Democrat had told colleagues that the Mayorkas trial would begin on Thursday. The articles were expected to be delivered on Wednesday, a date “indicated” by the Speaker in a letter previously sent to Sen. Schumer, according to the outlet.

“Crazy thing, I’m an impeachment manager, and those are actually my articles of impeachment. And I found out from the press they were being delayed,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who was unaware of GOP senators discussing a delay.

“Our plan was to hold the articles of impeachment, build the case to the American people [and] build the pressure on [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer in the Senate as to why they need to hold a trial,” Greene told the Washington Examiner.

“We were talking about holding them back, maybe not even sending them until this summer. Then the speaker’s office made the change to send it supposedly tomorrow. And now that’s been changed again, and I’m hearing it all from the press,” she added.

“We’ve been asked by our Senate colleagues to give them the opportunity to lay a foundation to try to force Leader Schumer to hold true hearings … and let the impeachment managers be able to present our evidence to the Senate,” Rep. Michael Guest (R-TN) said.

“Whether it’s a week delay or two-week delay, whatever we need to do to make sure that we actually are able to have a full impeachment hearing. I’m willing to wait as long as it takes,” he told the Washington Examiner.

The delay may stave off Schumer’s scuttling of the trial but it’s hard to see how Republicans will be able to prolong the inevitable of their lawless counterparts rejecting the impeachment.

Chris Donaldson
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