Ricketts Slams Schumer’s Dismissal of Mayorkas Impeachment on the Senate Floor: “There Was No Trial!”
April 18, 2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, in a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) slammed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his Democratic colleagues for their failure to hold an impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“They have overturned two hundred and twenty-seven years of precedents…” Ricketts said.
“There was no trial! There was no trial! The Majority Leader decided that he could determine what was unconstitutional and get every single one of his Democrats along partisan lines to vote for it.”
“It is to the detriment of our Constitution and our country that we are not being allowed to have a trial to examine the evidence and determine whether or not Alejandro Mayorkas is guilty, and whether or not he should be impeached,” Ricketts closed.
TRANSCRIPT:
Senator Ricketts: “Thank you very much. I appreciate the colleague from Utah for organizing this.
“My, my, my, what have our Majority Leader and the Democrats in the Senate wrought. They have overturned two hundred and twenty-seven years of precedents that my colleagues have talked about.
“Twenty-one previous impeachments, all scheduled for trial. Seventeen came to trial and the ones that did not, because the person who was to be impeached was either expelled or dismissed, prior to the trial.
“To my colleague from Texas, his point about the media being complicit. One of the headlines of Politico that I was told about said the trial lasted only three hours.
“There was no trial! There was no trial! The Majority Leader decided that he could determine what was unconstitutional and get every single one of his Democrats along partisan lines to vote for it.
“Said it was unconstitutional, did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
“Let me briefly examine that. Article I sent over to us by the House. I’m just going to read the title, ‘Willful and systematic refusal to comply with the law.’ That’s Article I.
“Let me tell you about complying with the law. Prior to this administration, the Trump administration had brought illegal crossings down to a 45-year low.
“What we have seen since then is an explosion of illegal crossings. Over 1.7 in the first year of the Biden administration, nearly 2.4 in the second, nearly 2.5 in the third.
“Now, if you count all the people who tried to cross the border illegally or have crossed the border, including the got aways, it’s 9.4 million people. Larger than the population of New York City! 300,000 in just December alone. That is larger than our capital city in Nebraska, Lincoln.
“The evidence is right there, that we’re not doing a good job at the southern border.
“And why would that be? Well, because Alejandro Mayorkas is complicit in not following the law.
“In a memorandum Mayorkas sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in 2021, he said, and I’m going to quote here, ‘the fact an individual is a removable non-citizen.’ Notice he doesn’t even say illegal alien, which is what it says in the law.
“He says, ‘the fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen, therefore, should not alone be the basis for an enforcement action against them.’ Basically saying, just because you broke the law doesn’t mean we have to enforce the law. That right there should tell you he is willfully disregarding the law. Absolutely.
“Or how about the case of parole, where the law says that it’s only supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis in situations where the person has an extreme humanitarian need or it’s in the best interest of our country.
“Under the Obama and the Trump administrations it was used an average of 5,600 times, paroled 5,600 foreigners in this country between the Obama and Trump administrations on an annual basis.
“Last year alone, Mayorkas paroled into this country 1.2 million. Whole classes of people. A clear abuse of the law.
“Folks, when you see instances where the Secretary for Homeland Security is not following the law, doesn’t that raise the question? Shouldn’t we have a trial? Shouldn’t we examine whether or not he actually should be convicted of this?
“And yet, as my colleagues have pointed out, not a single Democrat, partisan line, said, ‘no, that is not willful disregard of the law.’
“Let’s move on to Article II.
“Again, I’m just going to read the title of this sent over. [It] says, ‘Breach of public trust. Breach of public trust.’
“Well, what does that mean? How about misleading Congress? Wouldn’t that be a breach of public trust?
“On April 28th, 2022, Mayorkas testified repeatedly in front of the House Judiciary Committee that DHS possessed the operational control of the southwest border including, in accordance with statutory definition.
“But I just told you how the number of people crossing the border had exploded. My colleague from Texas did a great job of talking about the human suffering this created.
“If we had been allowed to have a trial, we would have heard from Border Patrol agents who would have come up and testified personally, that the border was not secure.
“I have been down to that border as well, four times. I’ve seen the people coming across. That border is not secure.
“In the last trip down there, it was mostly Hondurans, but there was a couple from Moldova, on the Russian border, that had paid to get across our border. The whole world knows it’s open.
“This is absolutely what we are talking about. This is why we have to hear the evidence to go and determine whether or not there is guilt or innocence. And the Democrats have denied it. And it is to the detriment of our Constitution and our country that we are not being allowed to have a trial to examine the evidence and determine whether or not Alejandro Mayorkas is guilty, and whether or not he should be impeached.
“I think the few things I have laid out here this afternoon go exactly to, we should examine the questions. And the Democrats chose not to even ask the questions before they dismissed this entirely.
“Thank you to my colleague from Utah for giving me the opportunity to be able to address these issues.”