WASHINGTON (WV News) — Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., expressed her frustration Thursday after impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were rejected.
Capito, during her weekly media briefing, said the dismissal of both articles and the failure of the Senate to hold a trial was a “grave disappointment.”
“Sen. Schumer (Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer) and the Senate Democrats just voted it off the table so we couldn’t even hear what the House found how the secretary has been shunning the law in terms of asylum and parole and other things,” she said.
The first article of impeachment charged Mayorkas with “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with immigration law, and the second article charged him with a “breach of trust” for saying the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico was secure, according to The Associated Press.
Democrats decided the process was “not a valid inquiry,” Capito said.
“My constitutional duty is to have a trial — as we have for every other person who has been impeached by the House that didn’t resign first,” she said. “So have a trial, listen to the evidence and then vote one way or the other.”
She “never heard the evidence” the House brought forward, Capito said.
“I don’t even know what the depth of the charges brought against him could or would be,” she said. “We never even got to that point. Sen. Schumer took it off the table with the support of every Senate Democrat.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voted along with fellow Senate Democrats to reject the articles of impeachment.
Manchin, who said President Joe Biden is “responsible for allowing the situation to get out of hand” at the border, pointed out that Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan boarder bill in February.
“My Republican friends in Congress also bear the responsibility of making it worse by refusing to even vote for one of the strongest, most sensible border security bills in decades that was endorsed by the 18,000 Border Patrol agents fighting every day to secure our country,” Manchin said in a statement.
The bill, which was rejected in early February, paired more than $80 billion worth of funding for Ukraine, Israel and humanitarian aid with increased security measures at the southern border and immigration reforms.
He voted to reject the impeachment articles in order to avoid setting a “dangerous precedent,” Manchin said.
“I voted to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas to avoid setting the dangerous precedent that this solemn process could be weaponized again against future administration officials to score cheap political points,” Manchin said. “I believe in American democracy and the American people’s ability to settle our policy disputes at the ballot box in November.”