What are the historical outcomes of impeachment efforts against Cabinet secretaries in U.S. history?
Executive summary
Impeachment of Cabinet secretaries is vanishingly rare in U.S. history: the post-Civil War case of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876 is the canonical example, and the House’s 2024 impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reopened a long-dormant tool of congressional oversight whose practical outcome—Senate acquittal or failure to convict—reflects political, constitutional and institutional limits on removing Cabinet officers [1] [2] [3].
1. A strikingly sparse historical record
Congress has deployed impeachment against relatively few executive-branch officials overall, and the use of that power against Cabinet secretaries has been especially infrequent: authoritative histories note three presidents, one senator, one cabinet officer and multiple judges have been impeached by the House, and only a handful of officials have actually been removed by Senate conviction—primarily judges, not Cabinet secretaries [3] [4] [5].
2. William W. Belknap : the 19th‑century test case
The most-cited precedent is William Belknap, President Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War, who was impeached by the House in 1876 over allegations that he had profited personally from contracts and “prostituted” the office; his case has been treated as the only Cabinet-level impeachment that reached a Senate trial in the 19th century and remains the touchstone for comparisons [6] [1]. Historical accounts emphasize that Belknap’s conduct fit the era’s corruption narratives and that the episode occurred in a fraught post‑Civil War constitutional environment that tested separation-of-powers norms [6] [3].
3. Alejandro Mayorkas : a modern revival and partisan split
House Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in February 2024, marking the first such House action against a Cabinet official in nearly 150 years and prompting immediate debate about motive and evidence; media and government analyses reported that the move was narrowly adopted along party lines and that Senate conviction was extremely unlikely [2] [7]. Coverage and legal commentary framed Mayorkas’s articles as grounded in policy disputes about border enforcement rather than the kind of personal corruption that animated Belknap’s case, and Democratic officials called the effort politically motivated [6] [2].
4. Typical outcomes: resignation, political rebuke, or Senate acquittal
Practical outcomes from Cabinet-focused impeachment drives have tended not to be removal by conviction: historical summaries indicate that Cabinet impeachments and attempts often end with resignation or stall in the Senate, and no modern Cabinet secretary has been permanently removed via the impeachment‑conviction process—Belknap’s episode did not result in a lasting Senate conviction, and Mayorkas was widely expected either to be acquitted or spared conviction in the Senate [3] [8] [2]. Broader records of impeachment show that convictions are rare and concentrated among federal judges, underscoring the uphill legal and political slope for removing executive officers through this mechanism [4] [5].
5. Why removal is so difficult: constitutional design and political reality
The Constitution vests impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, and the Framers deliberately balanced impeachment against separation-of-powers concerns—Congress has only rarely used impeachment to remove executive officials because the power to remove is also one of presidential control over the executive branch [4] [3]. Practically, Cabinet secretaries serve “at the pleasure” of the president, meaning presidents can dismiss them directly, which reduces Congress’s incentive to rely on impeachment for ordinary policy disagreements; when Congress does act, success depends on two‑thirds Senate support, a high political bar that history shows is seldom met for executive-branch figures [9] [3].
6. Bottom line and open questions in the record
The historical outcomes are clear in pattern if not in neat arithmetic: impeachment efforts against Cabinet secretaries are rare, have usually failed to produce Senate removal, and when they proceed often reflect either clear corruption (Belknap) or partisan dispute over policy (Mayorkas)—with contemporary sources diverging slightly on counts and characterization, so readers should note that some institutional histories list one cabinet impeachment while more recent accounts count Mayorkas as a second House impeachment [1] [8] [2]. Sources consulted document the rarity and political dynamics but differ on framing and precise tallies, reflecting evolving events and interpretive emphasis [1] [2] [3].