The likely trial in the U.S. Senate to consider the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will push Washington Sen. Patty Murray into the spotlight.
Murray, a Democrat and the president pro tempore of the Senate, will preside over the trial, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
House Republicans voted Tuesday to impeach Mayorkas, the first-ever impeachment of a sitting Cabinet secretary. (One previous Cabinet member, Secretary of War William Belknap, was unanimously impeached in 1876 but had already resigned.)
Three Republicans joined every Democrat in opposing the impeachment.
The articles of impeachment next head to the Senate, which is on recess for two weeks. When the Senate returns, designated House members will serve as impeachment managers, and present the articles of impeachment to senators, who will be sworn in as jurors.
As presiding officer, her office said, Murray would be responsible for administering an oath to all senators to do impartial justice. The rest of her role “depends greatly on how the Senate decides to proceed,” Murray’s office said.
Even as presiding officer, she would still vote in any full Senate vote, her office said.
“As the Senate determines how to proceed, I will consult with the Parliamentarian and Senate precedent,” Murray said in a prepared statement. She said she would have more to say when the process concluded, but faulted Republicans for devoting time to impeachment. “If House Republicans were serious about the border they should have worked with us on the bipartisan deal we negotiated, but instead they killed it because Donald Trump told them to.”
The impeachment effort will almost certainly fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to convict Mayorkas and even some Republicans have voiced opposition to the push. A simple majority of the Senate could also vote to dismiss the impeachment charges at any time.
Republicans accused Mayorkas of failing to enforce immigration laws, but did not identify any act of corruption or similar wrongdoing that have traditionally qualified as the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary for impeachment.
House Speaker Mike Johnson accused Mayorkas of “fueling the worst border catastrophe in American history.”
Democrats countered that Republicans had shown no evidence of a crime and were using a constitutional mechanism as a political tool.
“House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense,” Schumer said. “This is a new low for House Republicans.”
The Constitution says the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides over presidential impeachment trials, but is silent on who presides over other impeachments, leaving it up to the Senate.
Murray, who is in her 32nd year in the Senate and was elected to a sixth term in 2022, is the longest serving Democrat in the body. Nothing in the Constitution dictates who should be the Senate president pro tem, but since the mid-20th century it has typically been the most-senior member of the majority party.
The president pro tem presides over the Senate in the vice president’s absence, and can administer Senate oaths of office, sign legislation and preside, with the House speaker, over joint sessions of Congress. The Senate president pro tem also is third in line for the presidency. Twice last year, when House Republicans failed to agree on a House Speaker, Murray was second in line for the presidency for a few days.
Staff reporter Mike Lindblom contributed to this report.
