McCarthy Backs Effort to Expunge Trump’s Impeachments

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks to reporters as he returns from a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Caption in Washington on May 23, 2023. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is backing an effort in the House of Representatives to expunge the two impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump.

On Friday, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced two different resolutions to expunge Trump’s 2019 and 2021 impeachments. The resolutions state an expungement would act as though the various impeachment articles against Trump “had never passed the full House of Representatives, as the facts and circumstances upon which such Articles were based did not meet the burden of proving the commission of ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ as set forth in section 4 of article II of the Constitution.”

McCarthy endorsed the expungement effort in comments to the members of the media outside his office on Friday.

“I think it is appropriate, just as I thought before, that you should expunge it because it never should have gone through,” he told The Hill.

The first Democrat-led impeachment effort against Trump alleged he solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election and then obstructed investigations into the effort. The second Democrat-led impeachment effort alleged Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when demonstrators entered the building and disrupted a joint Congressional session to certify the 2020 election results; results which Trump has disputed.

While the Democrat-controlled House impeached Trump in both cases, the efforts failed to garner the support of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate, as is required to convict an officeholder of an impeachment charge.

McCarthy told The Hill that one of the impeachment efforts “was not based on true facts” and the other proceeded “on the basis of no due process.”

The First Impeachment

The first Democrat-led impeachment effort against Trump alleged he solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election by way of a July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to the impeachment proceedings, Trump had allegedly conditioned aid to Ukraine on a commitment from Zelenskyy to launch a corruption investigation into Joe Biden.

During his July 2019 call with Zelenskyy, Trump appeared to reference allegations that in 2016 then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas firm on whose board his son Hunter Biden served.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it ... it sounds horrible to me,” Trump told Zelenskyy, according to an official transcript of their call.

Biden’s ties to Burisma have come back under Republican scrutiny in recent days after lawmakers gained access to an FD-1023 form from an FBI informant. The informant alleged that Burisma’s owner paid $5 million to Hunter Biden and $5 million to “another Biden” for the sole purpose of ousting Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was planning to investigate the gas company.

“The FBI had credible evidence of Joe and Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings, confirming their involvement in a foreign bribery pay-to-play scheme and receipt of over $5 million each,“ Greene said Friday. ”All of this information was revealed to Congress by the FD-1023 form from the FBI’s most credible informant. The form vindicates President Trump and exposes the crimes of the Biden family. It’s clear that President Trump’s impeachment was nothing more than a witch hunt that needs to be expunged from our history.”

The Second Impeachment

Stefanik’s resolution focuses on Trump’s second impeachment, a case initiated on Jan. 13, 2021, and concluded a month later on Feb. 13, 2021.

The impeachment article against Trump alleged he “reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide,’” and “He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.’”

Stefanik’s resolution defends Trump’s decision to dispute the 2020 election results and argues Democratic lawmakers who voted for the impeachment had also questioned the trustworthiness of voting machines like those in widespread use during the 2020 election. Her expungement resolution also argues Trump’s “fight like hell” comment was taken out of context while excluding moments when Trump called for people to behave peacefully that day.

“Not a single evidentiary hearing on the Resolution was held, no witnesses were heard, and no process or opportunity to respond was provided to President Trump,” Stefanik’s expungement resolution states.

What Expungement Does

Expunging Trump’s impeachments may be more of a symbolic act than one with any practical impact. The expungement process typically applies to criminal defendants seeking to have an arrest or conviction removed from their record in the eyes of the law.

Impeachment differs somewhat from a criminal proceeding.

“It’s not like a constitutional DUI. Once you are impeached, you are impeached,” Georgetown University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said.

On the other hand, Turley said expungement of the impeachments could serve as a symbolic declaration that those impeachments had been in error.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) criticized the idea in a comment to The Hill.

“It’s a continuation of Republicans acting as Donald Trump’s taxpayer-funded lawyers,” Goldman said. “It’s telling who’s introducing them. And it’s essentially whoever’s trying to curry the most favor with Trump.”

Beyond the impeachments, Trump is also facing criminal charges on allegations he mishandled classified national defense information and obstructed government efforts to retrieve that information.

Reuters contributed to this article.

From NTD News