WASHINGTON — The White House slammed an effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in the House as “unconstitutional,” charging that the push is part of a broader movement by Republicans to “disregard” democratic checks and balances.
In a memo shared first with NBC News, White House spokesman Ian Sams said Republicans leading impeachment efforts targeting Mayorkas are playing “extreme, far-right politics” and likened their push to remove a Cabinet-level official to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and impeach President Joe Biden.
“Beyond the shameless partisanship of attempting to scapegoat a Cabinet secretary who is actively working to find solutions to a problem Congressional Republicans have spent years refusing to actually solve, this stunt by House Republicans is just the latest example of their blatant disregard for the Constitution and our democratic system of government,” Sams said.
While the White House has previously criticized Republicans over the impeachment push, the memo marks the first time it has advanced an argument about it on constitutional grounds.
Republicans argue that the hearings, which the House Homeland Security Committee launched last week, are justified because of record high border crossings and fentanyl trafficking across the southern U.S. border under Mayorkas, a Biden appointee. The effort is being led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
Sams’ memo goes on to cite pushback from legal scholars and experts who say there is no legal basis for impeaching Mayorkas and that voting to impeach a Cabinet secretary over policy disagreements is unconstitutional.
“Across the political and ideological spectrum, independent legal experts and constitutional scholars agree that the Mayorkas impeachment stunt is a ‘stark departure from the Constitution’ that is ‘indefensible,’ with ‘no historical precedent’ and ‘no current evidence’ of an impeachable offense,” Sams wrote.
The memo quotes a top witness for Republicans in the first Biden impeachment hearing, Jonathan Turley, who argued in a recent column that continuing the effort is a “slippery slope.”
A constitutional law scholar Democrats called as a witness at last week’s hearing, emeritus professor Frank Bowman of the University of Missouri School of Law, said he saw no grounds for Mayorkas to be charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors,” typically the basis for impeachment. Bowman, Sams noted, warned against using impeachment for political purposes and also deemed it “useless as a practical matter.”
Republicans have asked Mayorkas to testify in person before the committee, which is chaired by Republican Mark Green of Tennessee. Mayorkas was not at last week’s hearing.
