The new House Republican majority is considering expunging former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments. Many in the GOP say the impeachments were politicized and flawed prosecutions led by partisan Democrats.
Speaker McCarthy is receptive and said that expunging an impeachment is something GOP lawmakers are prepared to “look at” during the current Congress.
The Washington Times reported overnight that several House Republicans want to “give serious consideration to exonerating” the former president.
“I would certainly be interested in it,” Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia told the newspaper. Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas added that he’s “definitely interested” in expunging both impeachments.
According to The Hill, McCarthy said he completely understands why House members want to do it.
“I would understand why members would want to bring that forward,” McCarthy said in response to a question at a press conference on Thursday, before listing off several other key priorities for House Republicans.
“But I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it,” he added.
Rachel Maddow says, “It’s bizarre, of course.”
The only thing “bizarre” was impeaching him without cause twice in the first place.
Markwayne Mullin ran House resolutions proposing to expunge those impeachments from Trump’s record. While they failed, it gained the support of the fourth-ranking Republican Elise Stefanik.
It’s never been tried before and there are mixed opinions as to whether it can be done.
There is a historical precedent in place—the Senate once voted to expunge a censure of President Andrew Jackson after his battles with the opposition Whig Party—it is an imperfect one, largely because impeachment is a function of both chambers of Congress while a censure is not.
“My argument would be that an impeachment cannot be expunged because it has effect outside of the House—that is, it causes the Senate to hold a trial,” Joshua Chafetz, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told Newsweek.
“Expunging the Jackson censure is different, I think, because that was the action of a single chamber that had no effect beyond expressing the views of that chamber,” he said.
Constitutional law expert Gerard Magliocca suggested in a December 2019 post on PrawfsBlawg that it could be expunged for similar reasons. Since it wasn’t followed up with a conviction, the impeachment isn’t much more than a resolution. Then he noted that history never forgets.
Hopefully, history will also record the political partisanship that led to the impeachments. They were a political hit job.
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