Rep. Andy Biggs will help prosecute impeachment case against Homeland Security secretary
House Republicans next week will present documents to the U.S. Senate arguing that President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, should be removed from office.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., will play a leading role in that effort.
Biggs has been designated one of 11 “impeachment managers,” meaning he will serve as a prosecutor making the case against Mayorkas while the Senate acts as the jury. The group of impeachment managers includes other prominent conservative voices in Congress, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Clay Higgins, R-La.
The proceedings so far have been historic not only because they mark the second impeachment of a Cabinet member in U.S. history, but also because of strenuous arguments by Democrats and even some conservative legal scholars that the accusations against Mayorkas do not reach the constitutionally mandated threshold for impeachment.
An aide to Biggs did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Biggs has argued that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a "duty" to hold an impeachment trial.
“Schumer’s got a whole pocketful, a whole toolbox-full, of tools to try to avoid a whole trial,” he said in an audio clip posted to social media in early April. “The question will be does he use them?”
The Republican House delegation from Arizona, a border state, has been highly involved in the impeachment effort.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., helped advance the impeachment resolution through a House committee. On the full House floor, the resolution failed on the first vote as four Republicans broke from their party to oppose the measure. It passed on a second attempt by just one vote.
Now, the measure heads to the Senate, where a two-thirds majority vote would be needed to convict Mayorkas. That's an unlikely outcome in the Democratic-controlled chamber.
Senate Democrats could dismiss the measure with a majority vote, or move the measure to committee to delay bringing it to the full Senate floor.
House Republicans originally had planned to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate on Wednesday, but they delayed until next week in a move to gain more leverage to push for a full trial.
The impeachment resolution accuses Mayorkas of "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" and "breach of public trust" over Biden’s administration's handling of immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans argue, for example, that he has lied to the American public by saying that the border is “secure.”
Jonathan Turley, a conservative commentator and legal scholar, has argued that Republicans’ objections are based on a “disagreement on policy” and do not meet the constitutional requirement of “high crimes and misdemeanors” needed to remove a Cabinet member.
“In my view, Biden has been dead wrong on immigration, but voters will soon have an opportunity to render a judgment on those policies in the election. Mayorkas has carried out those policies,” Turley wrote in a recent op-ed published by the Daily Beast. “What has not been shown is conduct by the secretary that could be viewed as criminal or impeachable.”
Mayorkas is only the second Cabinet member in American history to be impeached. The first was William Belknap, the U.S. Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant. Belknap was impeached in 1876.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mayorkas impeachment trial: Rep. Andy Biggs to help prosecute GOP case
