McCarthy told reporters that he agrees with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik, who want to erase the charges against Trump from his impeachments in 2019 and 2021.
“I think it is appropriate,” said McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). “Just as I thought before — that you should expunge it, because it never should have gone through.”
Pressed on his views, McCarthy said he agreed with expunging both of Trump’s impeachments — the abuse of power charges in 2019 over pressing Ukraine’s president to dig up dirt on rival Joe Biden, and the 2021 charge that Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol as his supporters tried to overturn Biden’s election.
In both cases, Trump was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate after his impeachment by the Democrat-led House. But as he seeks another term in the White House, he can claim further vindication if the charges are expunged from his record.
The effort is the latest by Trump’s allies to rewrite the narrative of the defeated president’s tenure in office. And it underscores the pressure McCarthy is under from his right flank.
Just this week, McCarthy sidelined a proposal from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach President Biden, sending it to committees for review.
In explaining his views, McCarthy said he believed the first Trump impeachment, in 2019, should have never happened, and conflated it with a separate investigation by the Justice Department into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
As for the 2021 trial that was conducted swiftly in the week after the attack on the Capitol, he said: “The second impeachment had no due process.”
The speaker gave no indication he would move quickly to bring forward the proposals from Greene (R-Ga.) and Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who is the chamber’s fourth-ranking GOP leader, for House votes. Pressed on whether the proposals were a priority, he shifted to listing other GOP goals.
Asked whether he had spoken with Trump about expunging the impeachment record, McCarthy said he had not.
Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House, is the first president in U.S. history to be twice impeached by the House.
Democrats have defended their decision to quickly impeach Trump a second time after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol in 2021. They argue that the evidence played out for the world to see as the defeated president rallied his supporters to Washington and encouraged them to march to the Capitol as Congress was certifying Biden’s election.
Trump was first impeached in 2019 after it was disclosed that he had encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up political dirt on then-White House rival Biden — while Trump was withholding U.S. military aid to Ukraine as it faced Russian agression.