McCarthy Backs Effort to ‘Expunge’ Trump's Two Impeachments
It's unclear whether Republican resolution would actually do anything to rewrite history
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has thrown his weight behind an effort by two of his Republican colleagues to “expunge” both of Donald Trump's twin impeachments.
The California Republican told reporters he would back House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, of New York, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in their effort to expunge both impeachments. However, he said their resolutions would need to go through the committee process first before getting a vote on the House floor.
Trump was first impeached in 2019 after encouraging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up political dirt on Democrat Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign — while Trump was withholding U.S. military aid to Ukraine as it faced Russia.
He was impeached a second time for inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but McCarthy denied that supporting a resolution to expunge the impeachments was an attempt to gloss over Trump's role that day.
“Through some great research by our in-house historian Kyle Stewart, our view on this on the NBC Hill team is that this isn’t really a thing. It’s the idea, here is basically a non-binding resolution saying this thing that happened didn’t happen, and you can’t functionally remove an impeachment that was voted on, that went to a trial, that was done,” reported Garrett Haake, of NBC News. “Although, it does seem like this idea is gaining some support, nonetheless. Kevin McCarthy was asked about it a little while ago. We got down quite a rabbit hole going back and forth on whether he would support this idea.”
In a bizarre exchange, McCarthy tried to rationalize the desired expungements by citing the years-long investigation and report by Special Counsel John Durham:
MCCARTHY: “Now we find out with Durham and the others that the impeachment never should have happened. We find —“
HAAKE: “In what way does Durham indicate the impeachment shouldn’t have happened?”
MCCARTHY: “Exactly — exactly what he said. That he said they shouldn’t have gone forward with it based upon the information that they had, that the information wasn’t true.”
HAAKE: “Donald Trump wasn’t impeached on anything related to Durham. He was impeached on Ukraine and he was impeached on January 6. It had nothing to do with Durham.”
MCCARTHY: “No, no. Now, calm down.”
Except that Durham's probe examined collusion between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and top Russian officials. It had nothing to do with the substance behind either of the former president's two impeachments.
Even if Greene and Stafanik succeed in passing their expungements measure, it's not clear what it would accomplish.
They can't undo the congressional record of the votes that happened, and the impeachments weren't limited to the House: both times Trump stood trial in the Senate.
Although the former president was acquitted both times, the Senate is under a Democratic majority, which certainly wouldn't go along with any attempt by Republicans to alter Trump's status as the only president in US history to have been impeached twice while in office.
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