WASHINGTON (CN) — As the Senate Judiciary Committee marked a milestone Thursday in its efforts to quickly confirm the Biden administration’s federal court nominees, the panel’s Republican leader took the opportunity to acknowledge a developing political battle over Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The upper chamber’s legal affairs panel, tasked as the first line of defense for approving the White House’s judicial appointments, advanced four U.S. district court nominees and two U.S. marshal appointments during a business meeting.
With those votes, the Judiciary Committee has successfully reported 205 prospective federal judges to the full Senate.
Despite that fact, celebrated by Democrats, committee ranking member Senator Lindsey Graham used his opening remarks Thursday to bash his colleagues on a separate issue — the impeachment of the Homeland Security secretary.
The South Carolina senator, angered by what he saw as a push by Senate Democrats to write off the House-passed impeachment and avoid bringing Mayorkas to trial, said Democrats were angling to “take the impeachment process and turn it upside down.”
The GOP-led House voted in February to impeach Mayorkas, charging the administration official with abandoning his duty to secure the country’s southwest border. The vote, which failed on an initial attempt, passed on a second try by a single vote.
Although critics of the impeachment, including some Republicans, have argued that lawmakers have failed to demonstrate legal grounds for removing Mayorkas from his post, House Speaker Mike Johnson still plans to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial.
That process was slated to begin this week, but the GOP leader said the articles likely will be transmitted next week instead.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not said whether Democrats would allow a trial to take place. His party has enough votes to dismiss the charges altogether. However, he told reporters earlier this week that lawmakers should never use impeachment “to settle policy disagreements.”
With the threat of such a dismissal looming, Graham accused Democrats of working to “short-circuit the Senate trial in a way that’s never been done in 200-and-something years.”
The senator argued that most public officials impeached by the House have traditionally gone on to face a trial in the upper chamber, but that Democrats have “decided, for some reason, to make a motion to table and end it before it starts.”
That move “violates every tradition of the Senate” and is “constitutionally wrong,” Graham argued.
As of Thursday afternoon, Democratic leadership had not said whether they would vote to table the articles of impeachment.
Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, responding indirectly to Graham, said that the only progress lawmakers have made on immigration issues have been “on a bipartisan basis.”
The Senate majority whip reminded his colleagues of the Republican about-face on a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year; the GOP soured on the measure after former President Donald Trump publicly opposed it.
Trump said at the time that he would take the blame for sinking the legislation, Durbin pointed out. “Well, I’m blaming him for it,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee — which sat largely empty on the Republican side for much of Thursday’s meeting — advanced a slate of White House court nominees on a largely partisan basis.
The panel approved Eastern District of New York nominee Magistrate U.S. District Judge Sanket Bulsara and Eastern District of California nominee Superior Court Judge Dena Coggins on two separate 12-9 votes. Graham was the only Republican to reach across the aisle and vote in favor of the appointees.
Attorney Eric Schulte, tapped by the Biden administration to fill one of two vacancies on the District of South Dakota, cleared the committee on a similar 12-9 vote. The panel voted 20-1 to advance the second South Dakota district court nominee, Judge Camela Theeler.
Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said that the party-line votes on the New York and California appointments “seem to reflect lock step GOP panel member voting against any Biden nominee.”
Tobias speculated that lawmakers may have thought Bulsara and Coggins were too liberal but pointed out that both nominees faced little harsh questioning from Republicans during their confirmation hearings.
He also lauded Graham for breaking party lines. The ranking member “votes for Biden nominees who he finds well qualified and mainstream” and urges his colleagues to follow suit because he “believes that elections have consequences.”
The party-line vote on South Dakota nominee Schulte was unusual, Tobias observed, because both he and fellow South Dakota appointee Theeler had been recommended to President Biden by the state’s Republican Senate delegation.
The Judiciary Committee also voted Thursday to advance White House nominees for two U.S. marshal vacancies: David Barnett, tapped for the District of New Mexico; and Clinton Fuchs, selected for the District of Maryland.
The panel also held off voting on a bipartisan bill aimed at reauthorizing a Justice Department program promoting community policing services.
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