February 07, 2024 11:22 AM UTC

Mayorkas Impeachment Fails Despite Shady Maneuvering from Speaker Johnson

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• by: Colorado Pols

House Republicans tried — and failed — to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday, which was another in a long string of embarrassments for a congressional majority considered to be among the most dysfunctional in modern history.

Colorado Rep. Ken Buck (R-Greeley) was among four Republicans to ultimately vote “NO” on impeaching Mayorkas, but the story is as much about what House Republicans tried to do in order to get around their lack of votes.

As The Washington Post reports:

Moments before the vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas narrowly failed Tuesday evening, a chaotic scene unfolded on the House floor.

The vote had unexpectedly come to a tie after three Republican lawmakers bucked party lines to vote against the measure. Two of those lawmakers — Reps. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) — had previously said publicly that they would not support the measure, citing lack of evidence that Mayorkas had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. But a third, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), had stayed mum about how he would vote, hours after warning his GOP colleagues behind closed doors that impeaching the first cabinet secretary in 150 years would open “Pandora’s Box.”

Gallagher ultimately voted no, which Republican leaders accepted since they could lose three votes to launch the first impeachment of the 118th Congress. But minutes later, the vote arrived at a 215-215 tie, an unexpected turn of events that stunned the House floor into a standstill.

Gallagher’s fellow Republicans swarmed him on the House Floor in an effort to convince him to change his mind, to no avail. But there is another important part to this story that involves how the vote ended up in a tie in the first place. As The New York Times reports:

Three House Republicans had already cast votes against impeaching Mr. Mayorkas, and based on attendance at the previous vote, the G.O.P. could afford no more. The tally held steady, and it seemed the indictment that Republicans had promised their base for over a year — accusing Mr. Mayorkas of refusing to comply with the law and breaching the public trust related to a surge of migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico — could squeak by along party lines.

Then, like a scene out of a political thriller, Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, appeared at the last moment to cast a surprise ballot — from a wheelchair, wearing blue hospital clothing and tan socks. He voted no.

Mr. Green’s vote was decisive. It tied up the measure, 215 to 215, and handed a stunning defeat to Speaker Mike Johnson.“I was determined to cast the vote long before — I had no idea how close it was going to be,” Mr. Green said in an interview on Tuesday night from his hospital bed, where he had returned shortly after voting. “I didn’t come assuming that my vote was going to make a difference. I came because it was personal.”…[Pols emphasis]

…Mr. Green was still in the hospital on Tuesday recovering from surgery when he learned the House would vote on the impeachment charges against Mr. Mayorkas that night. He spoke to his doctors and phoned Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, to let him know that he would take an Uber to the Capitol. Mr. Jeffries did not insist he make the vote, Mr. Green said, but arranged transportation for him.

“I had to cast this vote because this is a good, decent man whose reputation should not be besmirched,” Mr. Green said of Mr. Mayorkas.

House Speaker “MAGA” Mike Johnson was well aware that Green was still in the hospital recovering from surgery…which is why he called the Mayorkas impeachment vote on Tuesday. This morning Johnson explained to reporters that he thought Green wouldn’t be available for the vote:

 

Post by @adamparkhomenko

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MIKE JOHNSON: “We have a razor-thin margin here, and every vote counts. Sometimes when you’re counting votes, and people show up when they weren’t expected to be in the building, it changes the equation.”

What Johnson really means to say is that he was trying to game the system and cheat in order to impeach Mayorkas because he KNEW he didn’t have enough Republican support.

But wait…it gets even more disgusting!

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — the House impeachment manager for this case — told reporters after the vote that Democrats were hiding Rep. Green in the closet in order to “throw them off”:

“They hid one of their members, waiting until the last minute, watching to see our votes, trying to throw us off on the numbers that we had versus the numbers that they had.”

Yeah, THAT’S what happened. House Democrats made Rep. Al Green have abdominal surgery on Friday as part of a ruse to convince Republicans that they had enough votes to impeach Mayorkas. Nevermind that Republicans ALWAYS had enough votes to impeach Mayorkas…but they couldn’t convince enough members of their own caucus to vote “YES.”

This Republican majority is responsible for the most unproductive Congress in decades. They’re uninterested in governing and too disorganized to even succeed at cheating.