Could the House of Representatives try to expunge former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments? According to a new report from Politico, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Trump it would.
It all started in June after McCarthy made a comment about Trump’s electability on CNBC.
“The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer,” McCarthy said.
Trump was reportedly furious when he heard that and wanted McCarthy to endorse his presidential run immediately. Politico reported that McCarthy declined to endorse Trump but told him that the House would vote to expunge his two impeachments. McCarthy denied that he made the deal.
Some Republicans publicly support expungement. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced a resolution to expunge the impeachments in June.
“We’ve just got to get 218 votes. And I think a lot of the conferences is [sic] there and there’s a few more and I think they’ll get there. And it’s the right thing to do, expunging these wrongful impeachments. They were politically motivated, the processes were wrong,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said.
But there are only 222 Republicans in the House, so getting 218 votes is not a sure thing. Moderate Republicans are questioning whether the House has the authority to do expunge and add that it wouldn’t change the fact that it happened.
“It doesn’t make sense to me. Because if you’re found not guilty, what do we expunge?” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Politico.
Even the chairman of the House Oversight Committee wouldn’t say if he supports it.
“I haven’t even given much thought about that,”Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said.
“But I’ll tell you, I was sitting there thinking yesterday, listening to the whistleblowers talk about the millions of dollars that the Biden’s took from Burisma,” Comer added. “And now I’m thinking about Jamie Raskin sitting beside me and he led the impeachment of Donald Trump for simply asking the President of Ukraine about that corruption. I thought, ‘my goodness, Jamie Raskin must feel really uncomfortable right now.’”
Straight Arrow News asked Rep. Raskin, D-Md., to respond. He said there is no procedure for expunging an impeachment and called the move meaningless.
“We still had commanding bipartisan, bicameral majorities establishing as a legislative fact that Donald Trump incited an insurrection against the government,” Rep. Raskin said.
Ten Republicans voted to impeach Donald Trump for the Jan. 6 riot. Only two remain in Congress: Reps. David Valadao, R-Calif., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.
SAN spoke with Newhouse exclusively and he said he’s unlikely to support expungement.
“I’m not sure it’s a thing, really. Can you really expunge something like that? Is that, is there a vehicle to do that other than this legislation? Which doesn’t really erase it from history, does it?” Newhouse said.
“Well look up the term expunge. It’s, it’s righting a wrong, it’s erasing these wrongs. And we have the power to do that here in the House of Representatives,” Greene said.
To get this done before the August recess, the House would have to vote on it during the week of July 23. But lawmakers didn’t give any indication that a vote is being scheduled.
