Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) claimed that Democrats had thrown away two centuries of Senate “precedent” when they rejected two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday.
“Yesterday, Chuck Schumer threw over two centuries of precedent in the United States Senate out of the window,” Cruz stated in a post on X Thursday. “He stripped the Senate of the right to hold an impeachment trial. Democrats do not care about the Constitution or the rule of law.”
Just a few hours into the session, the Democratic-majority Senate on Wednesday rejected two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, voting primarily along party lines, 51 to 49.
In lieu of a floor trial or sending the case to a special committee for consideration, the Senate decided to dismiss the impeachment charges passed by the House immediately for the first time in 225 years.
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Speaking on NewsMax, Cruz noted that the Senate had held a trial in each of the 22 instances in which the House had been presented with articles of impeachment against a specific person, with the exception of those in which the subject had passed away or resigned from office.
“That had been the continuous precedent for 200 years until yesterday when every Democrat decided they were not going to do their Constitutional duty, they would not allow a trial to happen. They would not hear any evidence and instead, they simply ruled at the outset that we’re not going to consider the matter,” he stated.
Because the House handed over “the least legitimate, least substantive, and most politicized impeachment trial ever in the history of the United States,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that a trial was unnecessary.
Cruz moved to call for a private meeting of the Senate to discuss the constitutionality of the impeachment in an effort to thwart Schumer’s efforts to drop the charges, but Democrats defeated his motion.
In order to expose the Biden administration’s record on immigration and border security, Republicans had long advocated for his impeachment.
The House articles said Mayorkas had broken his oath of office and had broken immigration rules in addition to a “breach of public trust.”
