Remember how Senate Democrats buried Mayorkas' impeachment? It gets worse.
The Biden-Harris administration spent over $1.6 million in taxpayer money on the defense of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during his impeachment proceedings, according to internal documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project.
Although the taxpayer spending was previously reported on, the watchdog organization's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) findings confirm that the American people actually paid that much for a fleet of high-flying lawyers to defend Mayorkas.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a prestigious New York law firm, a million-dollar government contract to serve as Mayorkas' defense counsel.
According to a list of contractors, upon retaining the firm, at least 13 staffers from Debevoise & Plimpton were working on his defense case. The army of attorneys included a firm partner, the company's head of global information security, and a senior litigation case manager, among others, such as associates and general counsel.
Debevoise & Plimpton was ranked No. 9 on The American Lawyer's 2022 "A-List" and placed No. 1 overall on the legal magazine's "10-Year A-List." The company was co-founded by Eli Whitney Debevoise, a direct descendant of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin.
In 2021, the firm assisted House Democrats with building both impeachment cases against Donald Trump. The Washington Post reported that Debevoise & Plimpton produced audiovisual materials for Trump's first impeachment trial and compiled January 6 footage for his second.
According to OpenSecrets, the firm's affiliates have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a slew of Democrat candidates. Those donations include a total of $183,000 for the failed 2024 presidential campaign of Kamala Harris and $14,200 that collectively went towards the 2022 reelection of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who ultimately spared Mayorkas from facing a formal impeachment trial.
"It's obscene that Mayorkas spent taxpayer dollars to hire a fancy law firm to represent himself in his impeachment," Mike Howell, the executive director of Heritage's Oversight Project, said in a statement shared with Townhall.
Howell said that these recently unearthed records expose "how elaborate his defense actually was, all paid for by the people of the country he ordered invaded."
Under Mayorkas, a record number of illegal aliens have crossed the U.S. border, marking a mass migration surge not seen since the 1850s. Based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the Biden presidency's total net migration numbers are likely to exceed 8 million, a recent New York Times report says. That's a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record.
As a result, the portion of the U.S. population born in another country has reached a new high: 15.2 percent in 2023, up from 13.6 percent in 2020. The previous high of 14.8 percent was recorded back in 1890.
"Starting January 20th, he's not going to be able to hide behind that shield any longer," Howell said of Mayorkas. "Americans deserve true accountability for the purposeful damage he inflicted."