House Republicans are moving forward with their effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Republican House Homeland Security Committee will kick off the new year in a complete waste of time and energy with its first hearing in its impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges are ”failed leadership and his refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress,” and are not real. This is, as New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman told reporters Tuesday, “an embarrassment to the impeachment clause of the Constitution.”
It will not be taken up by the Senate, but will give Republicans on the committee (like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) some camera time. That’s what matters most to them. You can follow along here and on C-SPAN.
“You can not impeach a cabinet secretary because you do not like the president’s policies,” Thompson said, saying Republicans are just mad that President Biden is not “taking babies away from their mothers and putting kids in cages” like his predecessor.
Thompson making a good argument—with quotes from border control chiefs—that they need the funding and additional resources that Republicans have refused to provide. “Democrats want to give agents the resources they need to secure the border. Republicans do not.”
Thompson (that’s Bennie—forgive the typo in previous update) is listing the massive failures of the House GOP in 2023, arguing that this is all a political stunt for them to distract.
Rep. Benny Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the committee, opens. He starts with a recording of Green promising big political donors at a campaign event that he would impeach Mayorkas. This is a “preplanned political stunt,” to “keep that campaign cash coming.”
Chairman Green justifying this impeachment by insisting that what his calls Mayorkas’ incompetence is grounds, and the constitution doesn’t actually require “high crimes and misdemeanors” to impeach. Expect Democrats to come back hard on that point.
This is a long, but not exactly explosive, opening statement from Chairman Mark Green. He is showing a snippet from a previous hearing that he says is a smoking gun for Mayorkas lying to Congress which is pretty contorted and also mostly demonstrates that Republicans refused to allow him to actually answer the questions.
Chairman Green now focusing on humanitarian parole which the White House can use to allow immigration, saying that Mayorkas has abused it. This has emerged as a key fight in the Senate’s negotiations on immigration, the hostage Senate Republicans have taken in exchange for their votes on Ukraine aid. This hearing is probably also intended to give the Senate Republicans more (baseless) fodder for their fight.
Green showing video of news reports from Fox News and other right-wing outlets on “chaos” at the border, in case you were wondering if this was going to be a serious venture.
Rep. Anthony D'Esposito, R-N.Y., made his case for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' impeachment, speaking to Fox News Digital ahead of a House committee hearing Wednesday, when attorneys general for Montana, Oklahoma and Missouri are expected to testify on how record numbers of migrants pouring into the U.S. pose a national security threat.
D'Esposito, who sits on the House Homeland Security committee, told Fox News Digital that the hearing comes after a year of investigations, rejecting the argument of some Democrats, including that of Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and others who claim the Republican-led Mayorkas impeachment probe is merely a "policy dispute" and is politically motivated.
"This isn't something that was rushed into. It's not something that is politically motivated. This is something that, especially for me as someone who spent a career in the NYPD, most of it as an investigator, I am proud of the work that the Homeland Security Committee has done over the last 12 months," D'Esposito said.
"This has become not a Democrat issue, not a Republican issue. This has become an issue for people who care about the safety of the United States of America," he continued. "This has become an issue for people who care about their quality of life. This is an issue about people who have watched the cities and places that they've grown up and loved and loved to visit become destroyed at the hands of Secretary Mayorkas."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on D'Esposito's remarks, but they did not immediately respond.
During a presidential election year and amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, D'Esposito argued that the Mayorkas impeachment hearings are crucial to national security.
"We've heard the numbers. You know, over 3 million people have come into this country since Joe Biden has taken office. We're estimating that there are hundreds of thousands of known gotaways. These are people that we know that have come across the southern border, we just don't know where they are, what they're doing, or who they're associating with," D'Esposito said. "Think about the number of individuals who have crossed that we don't know about."
"There is no question that there are people that have come across this border that are on the known terror watch list that, again, we don't know where they are, we don't know where they're residing. We don't know who they're working with. We don't know the criminal enterprises that they are associating with," he said. "When you talk to local law enforcement agencies, whether it's in my district or across the country, from the smaller departments to the bigger ones, one of their biggest concerns is the national security threat that this migrant issue is plaguing on their jurisdiction. And it's not about, you know, if there's going to be another terrorist attack, unfortunately, it's about when there's going to be another terrorist attack."
Wednesday's hearing, titled, "Havoc In The Heartland: How Secretary Mayorkas’ Failed Leadership Has Impacted The States," comes days after sources told Fox News that Mayorkas admitted during a private meeting with Border Patrol in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday that the current rate of release for illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border is "above 85%."
"Secretary Mayorkas' job is to keep our homeland safe and protect our homeland. And when you tell us that [more than] 80% of the people are just being released into the United States of America with really no plan of that process of asylum, that's a concern," D'Esposito said. "That is in addition to the other issues that are plaguing our country, whether it's China, whether it's Russia, whether it is the conflicts in the Middle East and the terrorist attacks that have been committed by Hamas against Israel and the Israeli people and our Jewish friends. I mean, this has become a time [when] it seems that it's combustible here. As the committee who was put into place after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I mean, this committee was put into place for the purpose of protecting the United States of America and the people who live here against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And that's what we are doing."
Sources also told Fox News that between Dec. 1 and Dec, 31, 2023, more than 302,000 migrants were documented attempting to cross the U.S. southern border – representing the highest total for a single month ever recorded and also the first time that monthly migrant encounters have exceeded 300,000.
D'Esposito argued that the United States is "not as safe as it should be and is certainly less safe" because of Mayorkas "following the direction of the failed policies of Joe Biden."
"Sometimes people are putting their lives in the hands of the cartels, the cartels who have actually the control of the southern border, not the American government, not Homeland Security, and certainly not Secretary Mayorkas," D'Esposito said, arguing that the last time Mayorkas appeared before the Homeland Security Committee, he tried to negotiate the definition of what it means to have operational control of the southern border but then turned around and admitted he has heard from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials that there is no control.
"He's lying on behalf of the president," D’Esposito claimed. "We can look back at the last 50 years. Are there issues with immigration? Yeah, but we are breaking records in the administration of Joe Biden. We are breaking records under the reign of Secretary Mayorkas. And none of those records are ones that we want to set. They are ones of the most people coming across our southern border, the most known gotaways, the most people on the terror watch list."
On Tuesday, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., went to the Senate floor calling for a vote of no confidence against Mayorkas for "negligence and gross mismanagement" of the southern border. Over the past three years, Marshall charged that 300,000 Americans have died "due to the drugs trafficked into our homeland" and the border crisis has cost American taxpayers $500 billion per year and "becomes more dangerous by the day, as terrorists, Chinese nationalists and over 1.7 million got-a-ways exploit our border at a rate higher than we’ve ever seen before."
As chair of the House Subcommittee on Emergency Management and Technology, D'Esposito said he has heard testimonies over the past 12 months about how detrimental the migrant influx has been to public safety, including fire service, law enforcement, prosecutors and emergency management. He noted how Andrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association, told lawmakers that the manning of firehouses in New York City is now being decreased due to migrant crisis-driven budget cuts. The NYPD, D'Esposito said, is also considering reducing new academy classes because the department "can't afford it." Additionally, along the southern border, sheriffs have testified to the committee how their jails are over capacity.
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee are offering their support for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ahead of the committee's first impeachment hearing on Wednesday -- with the lawmakers accusing their Republican colleagues of running a "sham" process.
"What is going on tomorrow is an embarrassment to the impeachment clause of the Constitution," Rep. Dan Goldman, D-NY, told reporters.
The hearing,"Havoc in the Heartland: How Secretary Mayorkas’ Failed Leadership Has Impacted the States," marks the first impeachment hearing after a year of investigations and reports by the House Homeland Security Committee which looked at Mayorkas’ handling of the nearly three-year migrant crisis.
The hearing will see testimony from attorneys general from Montana, Oklahoma and Missouri. The AGs will testify about the impact of the crisis on their states and their belief that Mayorkas is not enforcing the law.
But Democrats on the committee say that Republicans have turned what is a policy dispute into a politically motivated impeachment push.
"This is simply a policy dispute, a disagreement about how a different party is attacking a policy problem. And the Republicans are trying to abuse their power and the Constitution to convert what is simply a disagreement into somehow, some way, a high crime and misdemeanor," Goldman said. "There is no crime, much less a high crime or misdemeanor here."
Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., described the process as a "political sham with no constitutional basis, no factual basis."
Republicans have claimed that the crisis, which has seen multiple records smashed for migrant encounters, is "unprecedented and intentional."
"The chaos and devastation at the border and in our communities are the result of Alejandro Mayorkas’ failure to fulfill his oath as secretary of Homeland Security," Chairman Mark Green said this week. "His primary responsibility is to secure the homeland—and he has failed."
Republicans have accused the administration of fueling the crisis with "open border" policies, including expanded catch-and-release and the rolling back of Trump-era policies such as the Remain-in-Mexico policy and border wall construction. They’ve pointed to the record number of migrant encounters as the border that have skyrocketed during the Biden administration, as well as the significant number of releases into the interior.
Democrats and the administration have said that authorities are dealing with a hemisphere-wide crisis and are in need of more funding and comprehensive immigration reform from Congress.
Both Democrats and Republicans have proposed border and immigration bills that are vastly different from one another, while talks are currently ongoing about $14 billion in supplemental border funding requested by the administration, with Republicans demanding restrictions on releases.
DHS put out a memo ahead of the hearing arguing that Mayorkas was currently working with a bipartisan group of senators to find real solutions to the challenges at the border and called the accusations "baseless."
"Members of Congress serious about addressing these challenges should oppose this baseless impeachment that is going nowhere and instead work with the Department to keep America safe by properly funding DHS’s vital missions and reforming our broken immigration laws," the memo said, also pointing to statements by a number of Republicans who have said that the alleged offenses have not met the standard for impeachment.
Talking to reporters, Democrats also blamed Republicans for not working with them to solve the issue. Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., accused Republicans of being "complicit" in the struggles at the border.
"Democrats fully recognize, and the administration I know recognizes that we have real challenges at the border. There are people who are fleeing their home countries due to political instability, due to violence, due to poverty and trying to come to the United States and it has created a chaotic situation," he said. "But House Republicans, rather than work with the administration and work with the secretary to solve the problem instead care more about having a political issue to run on than they do actually solving the challenges that we have at the border."
Additionally, they praised Mayorkas’ handling of both the crisis and the efforts to find agreement on supplemental spending with lawmakers, and argued that Republiacns haven’t given him the tools with which to do his job.
"I think he's doing a very good job under very tough circumstances," Ivey said. "We haven't really given him the tools to fix it and now they try to beat him up for not being able to perform without the tools."
"Secretary Mayorkas has one of, if not the hardest job in the United States of America. And House Republicans have tried to undercut him and prevent him from being able to do his job every step of the way," Magaziner said. "Deny him the funding. Deny him the tools because they view this as a political game, when really we ought to be working together to solve the challenges at the border."
How Trump’s Unhinged Immunity Demand Could Unleash a Second-Term Crime Spree
If the courts decide that insurrection merits immunity, and Trump wins back the presidency, what might he feel emboldened to do in term two?
This has been widely depicted as a Hail Mary effort to scuttle special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding of Congress’s count of presidential electors—otherwise known for nearly 250 years in this country as the peaceful transfer of power.
But there’s another way to understand Trump’s move: It’s about what comes next. If he wins on this front, he’d be largely unshackled in a second presidential term, free to pursue all manner of corrupt designs with little fear of legal consequences after leaving office again.
That Trump might attempt such moves is not idle speculation. He’s telling us so himself. He is openly threatening a range of second-term actions—such as prosecuting political enemies with zero basis in evidence—that would almost certainly strain the boundaries of the law in ugly new ways.
2024 is the "better angels" election. And it's pass-fail. 🙏
Let’s hear from some law professors on this, starting with Randall Eliason/Sidebars:
D.C. Circuit Skeptical of Trump's Immunity Claims
Judges highlight the extreme consequences of Trump's argument
Early in Sauer’s argument, Judge Pan hit him with a great series of questions that highlighted the extreme consequences of his position. Trump is arguing that the impeachment judgment clause in the Constitution means that a former president may only be criminally prosecuted if he or she was impeached and convicted for the same or similar conduct.
The impeachment judgment clause provides:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Trump’s argument is that because this clause refers only to the “party convicted” at impeachment being subject to later prosecution, that means, by negative implication, that a party who is not convicted after impeachment cannot be prosecuted.
If you're just tuning in, the Trump argument today in federal court is that a President can order the murder of opponents and political rivals - but cannot be prosecuted for those crimes - unless Congress first impeaches and convicts for that conduct.
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S DC CIRCUIT (CADC) ARGUMENTS ON PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY (PI) (LAYPERSON FRIENDLY). Today, CADC heard oral arguments on whether DJT has PI for 1/6, in specific reference to Jack Smith’s prosecution in DC. Trump almost certainly lost 3-0.
The judges were Henderson (R-appointed), Childs (Biden), and Pan (Biden). The major issues were as follows.
CBS News' latest poll asked Americans whether they think that "Donald Trump should have immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took while he was president pic.twitter.com/Gn1Cokk4X3
— Maggie Jordan 91 criminal charges, 4 jurisdictions (@MaggieJordanACN) January 9, 2024
An argument for why Trump’s numbers can’t get much better and Biden’s numbers are likely to improve.
[Mark] Halperin then says that Biden’s three big problems are:
That he’s playing from behind as an incumbent, which sets a media narrative against him.
That Republicans have quickly and decisively rallied to Trump.
That parts of the Obama coalition—black, Hispanic, and young voters—have not (yet?) rallied to Biden.
I slightly disagree with Halperin on the importance of #1 and what he calls the Dominant Media. My own view is that journalists tend to overdetermine the influence of the media in electoral politics.
But however much weight you want to give this factor, Halperin is directionally correct: Because Biden is trailing Trump, the media slant is always something like, “Unemployment is 3.9%; Here’s Why That’s Bad for Biden.”
And the only way that’s going to flip is if Biden moves ahead in the polling.
As for #2 and #3, those are vectors along which Biden can reasonably hope to improve and Trump probably cannot.
For instance: I would posit to you that, over the next month, we will be approaching the high-water mark for Trump’s poll numbers.
I’ve now spoken to three folks at this Haley event - most decidedly supporting her - who voted for Trump both times but are now looking for new leadership. I asked what their turning point was. For all of them, it was Election denialism and January 6th.
We Can't Afford Weak-Kneed Liberalism In The Trump EraSincere objections to disqualifying Trump from the ballot are reasoned backward from misplaced fear
The glaring weakness here is that Republicans are real adults, making decisions for themselves, with a mix of real and fake information, and the fact that their leader engaged in insurrection and might thus be disqualified from office was not hidden from them at any point. They called it an insurrection. They acknowledged Trump’s culpability. Then they decided to reanoint him as their leader. This strikes me as Their Problem, not Our Problem.
2 new New Hampshire polls, with very different margins CNN Trump 39 Haley 32 USA Today/Boston Globe/Suffolk Trump 46 Haley 26
On Sunday, USA Today chimed in with this outrageous lead: “For Donald Trump, Jan. 6, 2021, was ‘a beautiful day.’ For Joe Biden, it was the day ‘we nearly lost America.’” And then USA Today proceeded with a story that acted as if it didn’t know which view was more valid.
These news outlets know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. But they’re afraid to tell the public directly. In the Times’ case, its headline got roasted on social media (including by me), and was later rewritten:
Here are your dueling New Hampshire polls:
Where they generally agree: DeSantis is in single digits. The CNN poll actually DeSantis him at 5% -- behind Ramaswamy.
House Republicans will consider a resolution Wednesday morning that, if passed, would set up a full House vote on whether to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
The House Oversight Committee will meet for a markup Wednesday at 10 a.m. to consider the resolution that recommends contempt proceedings against the first son after he refused to comply with a subpoena compelling him to appear for a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight and Judiciary committees.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a similar markup at 10 a.m. on a measure recommending Hunter Biden be held in contempt of Congress.
"Our investigation has produced significant evidence suggesting President Biden knew of, participated in and benefited from his family cashing in on the Biden name," House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is expected to say in his opening statement, obtained by Fox News Digital.
"We planned to question Hunter Biden about this record of evidence during our deposition, but he blatantly defied two lawful subpoenas."
Comer will say, "Hunter Biden’s willful refusal to comply with the committees’ subpoenas is a criminal act" that "constitutes contempt of Congress and warrants referral to the appropriate United States Attorney’s Office for prosecution as prescribed by law."
"We will not provide Hunter Biden with special treatment because of his last name," Comer is expected to say. "All Americans must be treated equally under the law. And that includes the Bidens."
Hunter Biden, ahead of his subpoenaed deposition, had offered to testify publicly. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan rejected his request, stressing that the first son would not have special treatment and pointed to the dozens of other witnesses that have appeared, as compelled, for their interviews and depositions. Comer and Jordan vowed to release the transcript of Hunter Biden’s deposition.
The first son, though, defied the subpoena, ignored the offer and delivered a public statement outside the Capitol.
"On December 13, 2023, Robert Hunter Biden failed to comply with deposition subpoenas issued by the Committees on Oversight and Accountability and the Judiciary for testimony relevant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry and the Committees’ oversight investigations," the House Oversight report, first reported by Fox News Digital on Monday, says.
"Instead, Mr. Biden opted to read a short, prepared statement in front of the Capitol. Accordingly, Mr. Biden has violated federal law and must be held in contempt of Congress."
Meanwhile, the House Oversight report identifies Hunter Biden’s testimony as "a critical component of the impeachment inquiry into, among other things, whether Joseph R. Biden, Jr., as Vice President and/or President: (1) took any official action or effected any change in government policy because of money or other things of value provided to himself or his family; (2) abused his office of public trust by providing foreign interests with access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him; or (3) abused his office of public trust by knowingly participating in a scheme to enrich himself or his family by giving foreign interests the impression that they would receive access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him."
The report states that Hunter Biden’s "flagrant defiance of the Committees’ deposition subpoenas — while choosing to appear nearby on the Capitol grounds to read a prepared statement on the same matters — is contemptuous, and he must be held accountable for his unlawful actions."
The report says House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer "recommends that Congress find Robert Hunter Biden in contempt for his failure to comply with the Committee subpoena issued to him."
Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blasted the move, saying there "is no precedent for the U.S. House of Representatives holding a private citizen in contempt of Congress who has offered to testify in public, under oath and on a day of the committee’s choosing. Chairman Comer repeatedly urged Hunter Biden to appear at a committee hearing, and Hunter Biden agreed."
If the resolution advances out of committees Wednesday, sources said a full contempt of Congress vote on the House floor could take place in the coming days.
Last month, Comer and Jordan expanded their investigation to probe whether President Biden was involved in his son's "scheme" to defy his subpoena for deposition earlier this month, conduct, they say, "could constitute an impeachable offense."
Hunter Biden, when making his public statement last month, said his "father was not financially involved in my business."
"No evidence to support that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen," he said.
The House impeachment inquiry against President Biden was formalized by the full House last month. The inquiry is being led by Comer, Jordan and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo.
In fact, with less than a week till the Iowa caucuses, he’ll spend two days in court – yesterday’s D.C. appearance and Thursday’s closing arguments in the civil fraud trial in New York – although in both cases he doesn’t need to show up. (In between he’ll do that Iowa town hall on Fox.)
The three-judge federal appeals panel that heard Trump’s claim of presidential immunity – two Biden appointees and one by George H.W. Bush – were openly skeptical of the arguments offered by the former president’s lawyer.
Ironically, this comes as Joe Biden’s campaign officials are complaining to journalists brought to the Wilmington headquarters that Trump should be covered more as a candidate and less as a defendant.
And yet there’s no question that the immunity hearing is crucial. If the appellate panel upholds Trump’s claim that he’s immune from prosecution for anything that can be construed as an official act, Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case will be dead in the water. If the panel rules against Trump, the prosecution goes forward before the election. Of course, like Trump’s appeal of the Maine and Colorado ballot bans, it will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
But by his sheer presence in the downtown criminal courthouse – and speaking to reporters afterward – Trump boosted the visibility of the hearing. Just by sitting in the same courtroom as Smith, he made it part of his campaign.
And that’s been the play all along.
Each of the four indictments has boosted Trump politically, pushing his poll numbers up and denying his GOP rivals of much-needed oxygen, as Ron DeSantis has said. Trump’s loyal MAGA followers see these charges as a Democratic plot to keep him out of the White House.
The more the media spotlight follows the ex-president to the courthouses, the more he can use them as a campaign vehicle.
Fueling the drama: another swatting incident, this one at Jack Smith’s home. Law enforcement officials showed up on Christmas after being falsely told that the prosecutor had shot his wife. The judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, was also swatted.
Trump’s attorney made the strange argument that no president can be prosecuted without first being impeached and convicted. The judges weren’t buying that, saying a hypothetical president could use the military to murder his political opponents and resign before impeachment. I’d add that he could avoid an impeachment conviction if his party controlled the Senate.
Judge Karen Henderson, the Bush appointee, said: "I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ allows him to violate criminal law." Audio from the hearing was made available.
Biden tried to change the trajectory of his campaign with his speeches near Valley Forge and in Charleston, making harsh personal attacks on his predecessor as a liar who fomented an insurrection and is a champion of White supremacy.
But on most days, Biden is a low-key presence, taking only two quick questions from reporters with terse answers, doing fewer interviews, and news conferences are as rare as a fly-by of Jupiter’s moons. Trump, by contrast, is constantly making news. I never thought I’d see a time when a former president overshadowed an incumbent president, but here we are.
On the video channel of pillow guy Mike Lindell, Trump said: "And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months, because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover." This drew media denunciations that he was rooting for a crash – especially since the stock market just hit new highs.
Trump made a video – a virtual requirement for TV – saying that what was happening to him "only happens in third world countries or banana republics. They’re using their Department of Injustice to go after his political [opponent] and this is all him," meaning Biden, "a hundred percent him. He’s the one that told them to do it and they obey his orders. It’s a shame."
He added that "Joe" has to "be very careful… You don’t indict your political opponent because he opposes the corrupt election, which you know was corrupt."
When Trump spoke for 10 minutes outside the Washington courthouse yesterday, he said they’d had "a very good day." But he added that if he loses the appeal, "It will be bedlam in the country."
Both CNN and MSNBC soon broke away. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins offered an instant fact check, saying there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in 2020, and that Biden is not prosecuting Trump.
Even after a contentious Pentagon news conference revealing that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has prostate cancer and that his refusal to disclose that serious illness is under investigation, the networks quickly went back to the Trump court hearing.
Senate negotiators made some progress in talks over the holiday break on a potential border and immigration deal, which was the Senate Republicans’ requirement for agreeing to a vote on President Joe Biden’s Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan supplemental funding package. Over the weekend, the lead Republican in the talks, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, said text could be released soon. The fate of that agreement, however, lies in the hands of his fellow Republicans and their fealty to their de facto leader, Donald Trump.
“Text hopefully this week, to be able to get that out,” he told Fox News on Sunday. “This agreement has to work. Everyone’s counting on this actually working.” Senate leaders were cautiously positive on Monday. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor statement that “it’s been a very promising few days. We have made more progress in the past couple of days on the border than we have in the past few weeks.”
“I was encouraged to see that Senator Lankford and our Democratic colleagues made progress toward an agreement to put meaningful border security policy at the heart of this supplemental,” said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “Russia is openly mocking the fickleness of Western support for Ukraine,” he intoned with a shocking lack of irony, since it’s entirely congressional Republicans’ fault that U.S. support to Ukraine is endangered. "The Senate cannot afford to get this wrong," McConnell declared.
As Monday wore on, Lankford tempered his optimism and his revised deadline for delivering text to next week, with a Republican conference on the negotiations hastily scheduled for Wednesday to brief skeptical conservatives, showing the cracks that could make Senate Republicans get this very wrong.
Ukraine aid needs at least 10 Republican senators to support it, and they are skeptical at best right now, both on Ukraine and on the immigration deal Lankford is trying to secure. Last month, Republican senators voted unanimously to keep Ukraine aid from moving to a floor vote over the border issue, and now there is a contingent of Republicans who seem intent on torpedoing Lankford’s efforts.
One of them is McConnell’s previous number two, Sen. John Cornyn, who is taking a hard line in the talks on the president’s authority to provide immigration parole to people who have financial sponsors coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti. These immigrants are not crossing at the southern border; they fly into the country. Cornyn and others want to severely restrict, if not end, Biden’s humanitarian parole authority. “We can’t fix asylum and then just have them release people on parole,” Cornyn told The Washington Post. “That would be a disaster politically, and otherwise.”
Other Republican senators like MAGA star J.D. Vance of Ohio are egging the House extremists on in their threats to shut the government down over immigration. “I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Vance told the Post. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas will reportedly try to force a “no confidence” vote on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in support of the House’s impeachment effort, which won’t advance in the Democratic Senate.
It seems like the most fervent Republican backer of Ukraine, McConnell, is following rather than leading his fellow Republicans at this point, going along with the demands from his hardliners on immigration. That’s a problem for the future of Ukraine, particularly with House Speaker Mike Johnson taking hard line on talks, insisting that the extreme House immigration bill passed last year is a “necessary ingredient” for the deal. He also moved forward with Mayorkas’ impeachment, despite the lack of cause.
Hanging over all of this is Trump: Republican lawmakers’ fealty to him; his increasingly bombastic, Hitleresque immigration rhetoric; and his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He would likely end all support to Ukraine and hand the country over to Russia if he got back into office.
The specter of Trump hangs over Congress and over Ukraine. There need to be enough Republicans willing to buck Trump for the bleak outlook for Ukraine aid—and thus Ukraine’s future—to improve.
On Tuesday morning, attorneys for Donald Trump appeared in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to argue that Trump can’t be prosecuted for his acts in attempting to overthrow the 2020 election. Rather than trying to weave some complex legal theory under which recruiting false electors and spreading claims of election fraud is a presidential duty, Trump attorney John Sauer took a decidedly more radical approach.
According to Sauer, a president can do just about anything without facing criminal prosecution unless they are first impeached on the same charge. It was an approach that led to some decidedly jaw-dropping back and forth with the panel of appellate judges.
Judge Florence Pan: Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That is an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six?
Sauer: He would have to be, and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution.
Pan: I asked you a yes or no question.
Sauer: If he were impeached and convicted first.
If that sounds like Trump’s attorney saying a president could order a hit on a political opponent and never face prosecution unless his own party supported his impeachment, that’s exactly what he said.
Could a president sell pardons? Yes, according to Sauer. Could a president sell military secrets to a foreign government? Sauer tried to weasel out of giving a simple answer to any of the hypotheticals thrown his way, but eventually went back to his central theme: A president has total immunity from all prosecution, civil and criminal, unless they are first charged in the House and impeached in the Senate.
Not only was this a position so extreme that even former Trump attorney Ty Cobb wrote to the court to oppose this view, but it turned out to be a wee bit contradictory to a position that Trump held when he was actually facing impeachment.
In 2021, Trump argued that there was no need for a last-minute impeachment since he could always be prosecuted later. Now Trump is attempting to use his party’s failure to vote for his impeachment as a guarantee that he can’t be prosecuted.
Pan: Say the president was impeached and convicted on a charge of incitement of insurrection. Then the government could bring a prosecution for the same or related conduct?
Sauer: Correct.
Again, I can't WAIT for the reports of how Trump is taking this -- his attorney arguing that Biden can assassinate him.
At the close of Sauer’s presentation, Pan made it clear that everything in Trump’s case hinged on this interpretation that any charges required an impeachment first.
“That is, if he’s correct that the impeachment judgment clause includes this impeachment first rule, then he wins,” Pan said, “and if he’s wrong, if we think the impeachment judgment clause does not contain an impeachment first rule, then he loses.”
Sauer agreed with the statement.
But the best summary of Sauer’s argument may have come from Judge Karen Henderson. “I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care of the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” Henderson said.
The arguments in court followed a midnight social media appearance from Trump in which he delivered a string of false accusations against President Joe Biden. This included claims that all the state and federal charges leveled at Trump were on Biden’s orders.
Following the hearing, which Trump attended, his attorneys were back with a repeat of those same false claims. They threatened that unless Trump gets complete immunity, Biden could be prosecuted just because the DOJ brought charges against Trump.
Lauro: Joe Biden could be prosecuted from trying to stop this man from becoming the next president of the United States. pic.twitter.com/AeXXc5d8az
So far, Trump's lawyer's argument comes down to: If you prosecute Trump, we'll come after you, whether what you've done is crimes or not, and we'll do it in Texas with a Texas jury.
Arguments on Tuesday were related to the four-count indictment special counsel Jack Smith filed against Trump in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 results. The trial in that case is slated to begin on March 4, but U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has put further hearings on hold until the issue of immunity is resolved.
Whatever happens at the appellate level, the results are almost certain to be immediately appealed to the Supreme Court.
