President Donald Trump is reportedly pushing his allies to have his two impeachments “expunged from the record” — an idea labeled “absurd” by critics because there is no such procedure in the Constitution to do so.
The president told The Wall Street Journal that Congress should pass the resolution to scrub his first-term impeachments, described by the White House as “phony attacks.”
“It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump said in a phone call this week with the outlet. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.”
Trump was impeached twice by the Democratic-led House of Representatives; first in 2019 over allegations of abusing the power of his office by attempting to extort a political favor from Ukraine, and again in January 2021 with charges of “incitement of insurrection” following the January 6 Capitol riots. The Senate acquitted him in both cases, which left him in office.
The president’s latest move to void the impeachments from the record follows his recent attempts to reverse the outcomes of multiple legal cases that ruled against him.
“Trump-deranged Democrats have spent years launching phony attacks against the President and weaponizing the government against him,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Independent. “It’s no surprise that sane individuals are recognizing these sham efforts and are interested in undoing those shameful actions. President Trump remains focused on one thing: doing what’s best for the American people.”
Speaker Mike Johnson told the newspaper he has discussed the plans with Trump, in addition to Alan Dershowitz—the attorney who told the president it “wasn’t clear” whether it would be constitutional for him to serve a third term—and attorney Jay Sekulow, who represented Trump during the first impeachment trial.
“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Johnson told the WSJ. “We were saying it at the time, now we know. And they make a very compelling case that it should be expunged from the record, because it was a hyperpartisan attack job.”
The Republican also said the plans were “not an order of first priority” but were “something that Congress should make right.”
The conversations began a month ago, Johnson added.
Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the WSJ that voiding the impeachments was “an absurd idea.”
“It’s in the history books,” Gerhardt said. “Historically, nobody thought that Congress had this power, because Congress doesn’t have this power.”
Trump has already floated the idea on Truth Social. In April, he shared a clip of Dershowitz saying, “I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be done.”
In another Truth Social outburst on Thursday, the president railed against Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Al Green, who previously went after him with impeachment articles.
“Jamie Raskin, a Loser in Life, who worked endlessly during my First Term to impeach me, and failed miserably, wasting the Country’s money, time, and effort, will guaranteed be trying to do it again, despite one of the most successful Presidencies in History,” Trump said. “The last one that went after me on Impeachment was a pathetic soul, Al Green, who just lost his race in a landslide to an unknown candidate but, in my opinion, one that had more talent than Raskin.”
The measure is reportedly on the back burner until after the midterm elections in November as Republicans fight to keep their majority in the House and attempt to shift focus to the cost of living for voters.
Still, the idea hasn’t gone down well with everyone in the party.
“Maybe they’ve given up on holding the majority?” said GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is retiring. “It’s silly,” he said of the plans to expunge the impeachments. “What happened is history.”
