Can Congress erase an impeachment? Trump wants to find out: Report
President Donald Trump and congressional allies are discussing a plan to expunge both of his first-term impeachments and remove them from the official House record, according to a new report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump wants lawmakers to pass a resolution declaring the two impeachments null and void.
In a phone interview with the Journal, Trump said, “It should be done because I did nothing wrong … It was a rigged deal.”
Why Trump was impeached twice
House Democrats impeached Trump in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress tied to his dealings with Ukraine and requests that the country investigate then-candidate Joe Biden.
The Senate later acquitted him.
The House impeached Trump a second time for “incitement of insurrection” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate then acquitted him a second time.
The push to erase them
Interest in the idea gained momentum in April when Trump shared an interview in which conservative journalist John Solomon and attorney Alan Dershowitz discussed whether his first impeachment could be expunged.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told the Journal he has discussed the proposal directly with Trump. The Journal reported that the speaker has also consulted with Dershowitz and Trump’s lawyer in the first impeachment trial, Jay Sekolow.
Johnson said discussions intensified about a month ago as Trump allies revisited evidence they argue undermines parts of the original impeachment investigations.
“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out,” Johnson said. “The more we know they really were sham impeachments.”
The Trump administration has already declassified material about the investigation into the first impeachment that supporters believe reflected negatively on the credibility of key witnesses.
Can impeachments be undone?
Supporters argue courts can sometimes overturn cases when key evidence is withheld, and they believe a similar argument should apply here. Dershowitz said efforts are underway to pursue that strategy, though he is not certain a presidential impeachment can legally be expunged.
Those efforts include a resolution introduced in April by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that has attracted nearly two dozen Republican co-sponsors. According to the Journal, both impeachments would be “expunged, as if such Articles had never passed the full House of Representatives.”
Issa’s resolution challenges the credibility of witnesses involved in Trump’s first impeachment and argues the second impeachment moved through the House in a rushed and flawed manner.
Not everyone believes the effort can succeed. The Constitution contains no mechanism for reversing an impeachment once the House has approved it. That means any resolution passed by Congress would likely carry political significance rather than legal force.
University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt called the proposal an “absurd idea,” arguing that impeachment proceedings are final once completed.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called the effort “silly” and dismissed the idea of revisiting events that are already part of the historical record, saying, “What happened is history.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
