Will Kevin McCarthy go forward with “expungements” of Donald Trump’s impeachments?: There’s no constitutional basis for “expunging” a presidential impeachment, but Republicans in the House are trying to do it anyway. Will the House Speaker go along with it?
Donald Trump Wants This Bad…
Earlier this summer, two members of Congress introduced legislation to “expunge” then-President Donald Trump’s two impeachments.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) introduced a pair of bills back in June to expunge Trump’s two impeachments, both of which were passed by the House of Representatives.
There is no precedent for “expunging” of impeachments, as the two previous presidents to be impeached, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, remained impeached, although neither was removed from office (Richard Nixon, in 1974, resigned before the House could impeach him.) Constitutional experts have said that there is no constitutional basis for undoing a previous impeachment, although we can be certain that if the House votes to expunge the impeachments, Trump will declare that he is no longer impeached.
In July, Politico reported, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy came under pressure from former President Trump, to endorse him. McCarthy had given an interview in which he suggested Trump might not be the best candidate for 2024, which caused the ex-president to fume.
“He needs to endorse me — today!,” Trump reportedly told staffers in July. McCarthy did not do that but attempted to placate Trump with another promise- that the House would vote to expunge Trump’s two impeachments and do so before the start of the August recess.
That did not happen, as the August recess is going on currently, and the House of Representatives is not set to return until September 12. It’s also not entirely clear that the House, in which the GOP has a narrow majority, has the votes to overturn the impeachments, or that a necessary number of Republicans in Biden-leaning districts would have any appetite for such a reach into the past.
With McCarthy making noises about pushing an impeachment inquiry into President Biden this fall, what will become of the expungement plans? Was the alleged promise made at a certain moment to placate Donald Trump who, since this happened, has been indicted two more times and may now have bigger things to worry about?
Politico reported last week that Democrats are “laughing off” the idea of revisiting impeachment, while also including a denial from McCarthy that he made any such promise to the former president. However, the speaker did announce his support for expungement in July.
“They could pass expungements, reversals, nullifications, apologies, pardons, and valentines to Donald Trump, but it makes no difference,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), an impeachment manager in the 2021 Trump impeachment trial who is now the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told Politico. Politico noted that if the Democrats get the House back in 2024, Raskin would be in a position to lead that committee.
“Whatever they want to accomplish on the floor will have no bearing in any way on what takes place in court. And it should not,” Raskin said of the expungement efforts. “We have an independent judiciary. And the legal process operates quite apart from whatever legislators say and do.”
The Politico story also described the idea of having to vote on expungement as “nausea-inducing” for Republican moderates in the House.
“The right-wingers in the House seem to want to impeach somebody else every day,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told reporters, per Politico. “Some of them are talking about Biden now. In my view, this is another symptom of just how extreme right the House caucus has become. And the fact that they can’t seem to get organized around doing the people’s business.”
Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker during the two impeachments and still serves in Congress, described McCarthy’s promises as “pathetic” in a July interview.
“The president was impeached because we had no choice,” Pelosi said on CNN’s State of the Union. “He had undermined our national security, jeopardized our wellbeing of our country.”
“Kevin, you know, is playing politics. It is not even clear if he constitutionally can expunge those things,” the former speaker added. “If he wants to put his members on the spot, his members in difficult races on the spot, that is a decision he has to make. But this is not responsible. This is not about the flag still being there.”
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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