House Republicans are moving full steam ahead on their impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, while their efforts against President Biden are more uncertain amid a historically slim GOP majority and tricky political dynamics.
The two major impeachment pushes come as Republicans are looking for political wins but have struggled with internal turmoil over a host of issues. But even as many in the GOP have long called to impeach both men, it’s the Mayorkas impeachment push that’s gaining momentum.
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), a swing-district Republican, said that House GOP impeachment efforts should prioritize Mayorkas.
“The case is so clear on Secretary Mayorkas, both in this town and throughout districts and states throughout the country,” LaLota said. “The case is clear on the border. We should focus on the clear case first.”
Skepticism in Biden investigation’s final stages
Republicans in December unanimously voted to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Biden.
But several members, including some who represent districts Biden won in 2020, stressed that support for an inquiry is distinct from backing any articles of impeachment — and say they have not yet seen the investigations, which focus largely on the foreign business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden, uncover impeachable misconduct on the president’s part.
“There’s little question that he was peddling a brand. I mean, who else would hire the president’s son with no experience for that purpose? That doesn’t mean it implicates the president,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) told CNN last week.
That skepticism — combined with one of the slimmest House majorities in history, with which only a handful of defections can kill any party-line measure — means the impeachment push against Biden is up in the air.
“I don’t think we have the votes for it now,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said. All the same, he added, “you continue with the investigation and you figure out where you’re at.”
Much of the information from the investigation, Armstrong said, has “not really matriculated throughout the whole conference.”
The Biden investigations are nearing a close, with a final report — and possible recommendation of impeachment articles — expected after the House Oversight and Judiciary panels complete interviews and depositions with several key witnesses. Those will include a deposition with Hunter Biden himself, the committees announced last week.
Mayorkas back in the spotlight
At the same time, the concern over the U.S.-Mexico border has shot to the top of political discussions in Washington, and eyes have turned back to Mayorkas after a brief reprieve from being in Republicans’ crosshairs.
For many Republicans, connecting Mayorkas to a top political issue may be an easier sell than a vote to impeach Biden over — barring any other breakthroughs — peripheral interactions with his family’s business associates, and unproven and disputed bribery allegations.
The White House and Hunter Biden have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said that the president was not financially involved in his son’s business activities.
Though a Mayorkas impeachment looked somewhat in doubt last year as investigations into Biden intensified, the focus shifted back to the secretary following two attempts by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to force a vote on impeachment, resulting in referring the matter back to the House Homeland Security Committee.
Since then, action has been swift: A markup of an impeachment resolution against Mayorkas is planned for Jan. 31, according to an internal memo obtained by The Hill. Unlike the impeachment effort against Biden, the House did not hold a vote to authorize an “inquiry” against Mayorkas and moved straight to hearings after completing a months-long investigation into border issues.
Republicans have held two impeachment hearings for Mayorkas, apparently cutting short plans from Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who told Fox News in December he would hold three or four meetings on the matter. During that same interview, Green acknowledged that an impeachment resolution had already been drafted.
After the close of its second hearing Thursday, the 18 GOP members of the panel quickly announced they had reached a conclusion on how to proceed: “Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and impeach Secretary Mayorkas.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Democrats rebuked the majority for moving so quickly and also demanded a minority-organized hearing on the subject, something they argued is backed by impeachment precedent. Republicans appear to be sticking to their timeline after Mayorkas was unable to appear for the hearing, though he has said he’s willing to testify and his office offered to find another date.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the panel, said Republicans are trying to force Mayorkas from his job over a policy dispute and criticized the GOP for failing to take action on the border.
“At some point, you have to listen to the men and women who do it every day. Every time they come and ask for more resources,” he said of both agency officials and border officers.
“Now, those people who have voted against putting more resources on the border, who voted against improving technology along the border, or engagement with countries such as Mexico, who’ve never voted for it, now all of a sudden the problem is the man who’s in charge, who’s only carrying out the policies of the person he works for,” Thompson said, nodding to Biden.
And during Thursday’s hearing he knocked the GOP for failing to engage in ongoing immigration policy negotiations in the Senate, saying “those real levers of power don’t seem to be flashy enough for my Republican colleagues.”
Impeachment far from certain
Though Mayorkas’s impeachment may have more momentum, it is also far from certain that it could pass the House. Green has reportedly been meeting with House Republicans to gain support.
“I just met with Chairman Green, and I have a lot of research to do before I make a final decision,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said. “But I sort of lean against both [impeachments] because I think it’s a very drastic action to take. And I think we are very shortsighted if we don’t think the Democrats are going to pick up where we left off with his theory and go after Cabinet officials and the next Republican administration or the next … Republican president.”
Republicans have accused Mayorkas of failing to follow immigration laws, arguing he has not detained and deported a sufficient number of migrants. They say he has fallen short of the standard for operational control as defined under the Secure Fence Act, which considers the border secure only if not a single person or good improperly enters the country — a standard of perfection that has never been met. They’ve also accused him of violating his oath of office and dereliction of duty — a term largely associated with the military.
The Department of Homeland Security has called the move a “baseless and pointless political attack” that comes as Mayorkas is trying to negotiate a border deal with the Senate.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said the interest in Mayorkas comes as the Biden impeachment investigation has “stalled.”
“They’ve kind of shifted their focus to the Hunter Biden stuff, but they’re not gonna get anything out of that that hasn’t been publicly disclosed already. So I think that’s a dead end. And the Mayorkas thing, they just didn’t really have anything there,” he said.
“I think from an impeachment standpoint for them, they’re trying to use it to continue to sort of put emphasis on the border. Apparently they think that’s — that’s scoring points for them politically.”
If the House does impeach either or both men, virtually no Republicans expect the Senate to convict.
Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), a member of the House Homeland Security panel and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he’s confident they’ll be able to “make the case” for Mayorkas’s impeachment.
It’s a signal of confidence from a former prosecutor who expressed reservations about a Mayorkas impeachment in its early days, stressing the need to tread carefully and gather evidence.
“When you look at the founding fathers — not to get into the weeds on this stuff — but dereliction of duty, abuse of power, all those things, it didn’t have to be a violation of a specific criminal statute” to qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors, McCaul argued.
And it also marks a notable difference from the cautious tone that top Republicans are taking when talking about a potential Biden impeachment.
Asked about the challenge of getting the votes behind any Biden impeachment articles, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he is “focused on getting the facts.” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has stressed that the House GOP will not “prejudge” the outcome of the Biden impeachment inquiry.
Juggling priorities and measuring success
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has previously said he would support impeachment based on his committee’s work. But he also says that if impeachment articles against Biden do not come to fruition, it will “absolutely, 100 percent” still be a success, and that he hopes to pass legislation defining “influence peddling” and banning it in the future.
“I never said when we announced the investigation, ‘We’re going to impeach Joe Biden,’” Comer said. “Now, maybe there was a member or two of our committee that said that, but they’ve said that about a lot of people in the administration.”
Anticipating the coming close of his investigation after a few last interviews, Comer sighed: “I want to be done with this,” explaining he has “taken a lot of harassment” from the press and dark money groups over leading the investigation into the Bidens.
“At the end of the day, I’ve done the right thing. We think this will be, long term, be considered a very successful congressional investigation because we’ve learned so much,” Comer said.
But House Republicans are juggling not only the two impeachment efforts, but a host of other tricky political issues from government funding to aid to Ukraine — threatening to deplete the impact of any impeachment.
“It’s all about making the case, and you have to have information and make the case with the fact that we have 50 stories happening right now,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), chair of the House Financial Services Committee. “There is no clear throughput. It’s Mayorkas, it’s the border — is it one or the other? Is it both? Is it Biden? Is it the spending deal? Is it Ukraine? I mean, we’re talking about 50 different things, not focused on any one thing.”
“If we get out of our own way, that might actually be a net plus for the politics of America,” McHenry said.