Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the National Labor Relations Board Relating to ``Standard for Determining Joint Employer
Floor Speech
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Mr. LEE. Madam President, the House impeached Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He is the second Cabinet official to be impeached in all American history. The last Cabinet member to be impeached was William W. Belknap in 1876.
The Senate held trials in virtually all previous impeachments, except for those in which the impeached officer no longer held office. However, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer now wants to effectively pardon Secretary Mayorkas--pardon him from this impeachable offense, pardon him from the impeachment itself--without letting us even examine the evidence.
No, the facts are not in dispute in this case. They are not in dispute in the least. If they were, there wouldn't be a need for a full trial. There would however, still, at a minimum, be a need to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty because in literally every other circumstance in the history of the Republic--unless circumstances have arisen that have rendered the case moot--the U.S. Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, adjudicates the matter, whether through short proceedings or long ones, whether through a trial conducted on the Senate floor or by delegation to a select committee. It does, in fact, reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty, as is the Senate's constitutional obligation. But when the Articles of Impeachment arrive, we have to remember that we have a constitutional duty to hold a trial.
Again, what that trial consists of may depend on the circumstances, but we still have to hold a trial sufficient to get to the point, in the absence of the case being rendered moot or something of that nature, to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty.
Now, I am so grateful to House Speaker Mike Johnson for delaying delivery of these so that we can give our full consideration. Ignoring the evidence before us betrays the trust of those who sent us here.
In this spirit, I have introduced a resolution, a resolution to ensure that we are prepared to consider the impeachment articles in a manner befitting our responsibilities. You see, the Senate has three states of being. It is always either sitting in a legislative capacity, where we pass bills, we debate and amend and ultimately pass or decline to pass legislation; the Executive Calendar, where we consider Presidential nominations and consider ratification of treaties; or a third state of being, of course, consists of a Senate sitting as a Court of Impeachment. We are always in one of those three states.
We have a separate set of rules governing our impeachment proceedings, but those rules aren't so specific as to define the precise details of each and every impeachment proceeding. Those have to be negotiated independently through resolutions.
It is to that end that I offer this resolution to put meat on the bones of the Standing Rules of the Senate on impeachment trials.
This resolution mandates that the Senate begin deliberations on the impeachment articles no later than 7 session days after the House of Representatives transmits them to the Senate. This timeline is not just for the Senate but so that the American people can hear from Secretary Mayorkas himself. He is afforded up to 7 session days to respond to the charges that will be presented to us by the House.
Both parties in this debate would be permitted to submit trial briefs within specific deadlines, ensuring that all arguments are heard and considered with the gravity they deserve.
It requires the House to file its records, including materials from the Judiciary Committee and documents related to Secretary Mayorkas's impeachment. These records, which are subject to scrutiny and objection by Mayorkas, are crucial evidence in our proceedings.
My resolution lays out how motions and arguments will be carefully managed. Motions, except those to subpoena witnesses or documents, would be required to be filed before the proceedings start.
The structure of the presentations and questioning would be designed to allow Secretary Mayorkas to comprehensively present his case.
After the questioning period, we would proceed to final arguments and decide whether Secretary Mayorkas is guilty or not guilty.
With my resolution, we would be ready to conduct a fair and legitimate trial.
So, to my colleagues, if you are confident that the charges against Secretary Mayorkas are baseless, then why object to organizing a fair and legitimate trial? Why try to sweep this under the rug? Why pardon someone before they are even afforded the opportunity to prove their innocence?
If you trust that Secretary Mayorkas didn't authorize millions of individuals to enter illegally into our country for swift and precursory release into the interior, don't object to my resolution; just hold a trial.
If you are certain that Secretary Mayorkas hasn't, in fact, increased the pull factors incentivizing parents across the globe to send some 430,000 unaccompanied children into the United States--in many cases, to end up in the hands of traffickers--then, by all means, don't object; hold a trial.
If you are confident that Secretary Mayorkas hasn't created at least 13 illegal immigration parole programs designed to increase the flow of people into this country by the hundreds of thousands, in violation of the very law invoked to facilitate their admission, then don't object; hold a trial.
If you are so sure, so confident, so certain that, under Secretary Mayorkas, Customs and Border Protection hasn't dramatically decreased its vetting processes for allowing Chinese immigrants to cross our border with military-age Chinese males, don't object; hold a trial.
If you believe that we haven't seen a dramatic increase in the known terrorist encounters at our southern border, don't object; hold a trial.
If you are confident that Secretary Mayorkas hasn't allowed enough fentanyl to flow across the southern border to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States of America, don't object; hold a trial.
An invasion, Madam President, is taking place on American soil. At least 8 million people--that is at the low end--have illegally crossed our border since Mayorkas became the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the numbers just keep rising. This unprecedented influx includes gang members. It includes drug traffickers, human traffickers, dangerous individuals from every single country in the world, including the thousands of military-age males from China. In December alone, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported 302,000 encounters. That is in 1 month--the highest number ever recorded in a 1-month period. These are not the kinds of records he should try to break, but he has broken them again and again and again.
Now, to be clear, Secretary Mayorkas has the tools to stop this invasion--to halt it in its tracks--and he has the tools to do it today. Not only does he have the tools, but he has the obligation and the sworn responsibility under the laws of the United States to do so. He doesn't need legislative action from Congress.
These aren't victimless crimes. The tragic case of Laken Riley--a life cut short by an illegal alien, one of the millions whom Secretary Mayorkas has allowed to enter our country unchecked--is a reminder of the human cost of this prolonged, severe, and deliberate malicious abdication of duty. Laken isn't alone. Her case represents hundreds of thousands of families across the Nation whose lives have been upended by the invasion that our leaders willfully allowed to happen and, indeed, invited. In fact, they encouraged them to happen.
Should Secretary Mayorkas be found guilty, these are impeachable offenses of the highest order. Make no mistake, this is not mere maladministration. This is a deliberate, willful, malicious determination to break the law in order to bring in millions of people who do not belong here.
There is no doubt, at this point, that the invasion of our southern border has inflicted pain and suffering on countless Americans. So we are obligated to figure out who is responsible and to make sure that they are held responsible. That is exactly why we are here.
Res. 624; further, that the resolution be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Mr. LEE. It is, indeed, unfortunate that this has happened. We have followed the model of previous resolutions that have been used in order to set up impeachment debates. This one was based off of one of the impeachment trials of the 45th President of the United States. These terms were agreeable under previous impeachment proceedings, and now they are not.
This is not the kind of case in which the material facts are undisputed nor is this the kind of case in which the office held by the person impeached has been vacated either by death or resignation. And so, in order to comport with, comply with, to follow the precedents that we have consistently followed in this country that have been in place for some two and a half centuries--to say nothing of the constitutional obligation behind those precedents and those customs--we need to hold a trial.
It is not enough simply to stand up and say: We are choosing not to address these. We don't feel like addressing these. We are going to decline to address them without a finding of guilt or innocence.
This is not appropriate. So, if they don't like these particular terms, then perhaps we can find another resolution that will allow us to approach these proceedings with dignity and fairness as an institution, showing dignity and fairness to the accused and to the American people alike, including and especially those Americans who have been victimized by the acts of lawlessness carried out by this administration under the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas.
We have an obligation to do this. Absent one of the circumstances not present in this case, where the case becomes moot--this one is not. We have an obligation, regardless of what the precise procedures look like, to reach a verdict, to make findings, to convict or acquit, to reach a verdict of guilty or not guilty. It is wrong for us to ignore this duty, and it is also phenomenally dangerous.
This precedent having been set will suggest that, from this moment henceforth, insofar as the party of the President of the United States is the same party that controls a majority of the seats in the U.S. Senate, Articles of Impeachment passed by the House of Representatives will be essentially dead letter, to be dismissed without a verdict-- without a finding of guilt or innocence, of guilty or not guilty. It would be a shame, and it would be a derogation of our constitutional responsibility.
My hope, my expectation is that we can find some other means. If this one is not acceptable to the body, to my friend and colleague from Illinois, then perhaps another will, but we must keep trying. We can't pretend that we can simply table these. That is not what we are required to do here, and it is a derogation of our responsibility.
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