Johnson’s risky impeachment bet

Speaker Mike Johnson is about to take a risky bet on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

While GOP leaders have telegraphed confidence that they will have the numbers to impeach Mayorkas in a Tuesday vote, they can only afford to lose three Republicans at full attendance. And they still have several holdouts and a stated “no” vote from retiring Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), as leadership allies publicly warn the vote could get pulled at the last second.

“Having a policy difference, having a bad administrator, having incompetence, doesn’t cut it. I think if you made incompetence the standard, you wouldn’t have anybody left in Congress,” Buck said in a brief interview.

If Johnson and his leadership team successfully whip up enough votes to recommend booting Mayorkas, it’ll amount to a small win by keeping his right flank happy. But a failure would become another bullet point in conservatives’ ongoing list of complaints about Republican leaders’ lack of accomplishments — massively denting their prospects of success in the more high-stakes push to impeach President Joe Biden.

And their margin for error could get worse, given a looming special election for expelled GOP Rep. George Santos’ seat. If Democrats flip the seat, Johnson could only lose two Republicans at most on any Democratic-opposed legislation, an almost impossible margin to work in a chamber that sees frequent absences.

House Republicans have put in months of behind-the-scenes work to try to shore up GOP support for impeaching a Cabinet secretary for the first time since 1876. Johnson, other members of leadership and Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) have been meeting with the handful of holdouts, many of whom have been tight-lipped about which way they might be leaning.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a conservative who sits on both the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, said some GOP colleagues might have an unattainable bar for what is an impeachable offense — or what sort of evidence investigators can deliver on Biden.

“Some people are just so reluctant because they’ve seen so much politicization of impeachment [that] they just don’t want to go there,” he said, saying some colleagues have been “conditioned to consider impeachment too radioactive.”

In addition to Buck, Republicans view Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) as a likely “no” on Mayorkas. He has not yet said how he will vote, but he’s previously argued that GOP investigators hadn’t met the bar of showing the secretary had committed a high crime or misdemeanor.

Underscoring how tight the vote will be, Green has been reaching out to Democrats, though all of them are expected to vote against impeachment. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) is expected to be back in Washington after recovering from a car accident, but Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) is working remotely as he undergoes treatment for blood cancer.

So if Democrats have full attendance Tuesday — and Buck and McClintock vote with them — Republican leaders have literally no room for error.

“We have a two-vote majority. Until it passes, I don’t know if we have the votes for anything,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.).

And they still have several holdouts to convince as of Monday afternoon, including Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), David Joyce (R-Ohio) and Maria Salazar (R-Fla.). Green and GOP leaders have ramped up their attempts to persuade those members, accusing Mayorkas of “breach of public trust” and “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”

Another swing vote on the Mayorkas effort, Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), said in a statement shared first with POLITICO that “if articles of impeachment are brought to the floor, I will support them based on the evidence I have seen.”

And as Republicans accuse Mayorkas of grossly mishandling the border, Johnson is actively refusing to consider the Senate’s bipartisan deal to ramp up border security. He’s instead called on Biden to use existing executive powers to address the influx of migrants. That bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate, too, but the speaker has said it would be “dead on arrival” even if it makes it across the Capitol.

“We have a responsibility under the Constitution to handle the impeachment proceedings exactly as we have,” Johnson told reporters on Monday, asked about impeaching Mayorkas while simultaneously hammering the border bill.

The Mayorkas impeachment effort has drawn growing criticism from Republican-allied pundits and constitutional experts, including some of former President Donald Trump’s then-impeachment defense team. Alan Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first trial, said last week that Mayorkas hadn’t “committed bribery, treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The DHS secretary has called the allegations “false,” “baseless” and “inaccurate” in a recent letter to the House GOP. He also touted his record leading the department and its compliance with lawmakers’ public hearings and document requests.

Even if House Republicans manage to impeach Mayorkas on Tuesday, the Senate will likely throw it in the proverbial trash bin quickly. GOP senators predicted that Democrats would sidestep a trial by sending any articles to committee or trying to orchestrate a quick dismissal.

Still, the results of Tuesday’s vote will help predict Republicans’ chances at landing their bigger fish when it comes to impeachment: Biden.

Many more House Republicans are holding out on impeaching the president than are wavering on Mayorkas. Those GOP lawmakers still want to see clear evidence that links actions Biden took as president or vice president to his family’s business deals.

GOP investigators now expect to make a formal decision on whether to pursue impeachment articles against Biden after they meet behind closed doors with his son, Hunter Biden, at the end of the month.

Conservatives believe they’ve collected considerable evidence against Biden, but also acknowledge that it only takes a couple of “no” votes to squash any impeachment effort. And they worry some colleagues have unrealistic expectations regarding how clear that evidence has to be.

Asked if some GOP colleagues had set a bar for impeaching Biden that was too high, Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) quipped: “That would be a question for Ken Buck and Tom McClintock.”