Trump allies push Congress to erase his two impeachments

Donald Trump’s allies have opened a new front on Capitol Hill: a push to have Congress void the two impeachments that marked the end of his first term. The move would not undo the House votes or alter Trump’s legal status, but it would offer a formal bid to recast how Congress remembers his presidency.

A White House official confirmed the effort on June 11 after The Wall Street Journal first reported it. Trump backed the idea in blunt terms, saying, "It should be done because I did nothing wrong." The administration and its allies are casting the proposal as a correction to what Trump has long called unfair political attacks, even though Congress has no described procedure for erasing a completed impeachment.

The constitutional limits are stark. Congress’s impeachment materials say a conviction removes an official from office, and the Senate may later vote on whether that person should be barred from future office. But there is no established mechanism for expunging an impeachment after the fact, and no known precedent for Congress wiping a federal impeachment from the historical record. Any resolution would therefore be symbolic rather than legal, changing the political narrative more than the constitutional record.

Trump was first impeached on Dec. 18, 2019, when the House voted 230-197 on abuse of power and 229-198 on obstruction of Congress after he pressed Ukraine to investigate a political rival. The Senate acquitted him in February 2020. The House impeached him again on Jan. 13, 2021, by a vote of 232-197 on incitement of insurrection after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ten Republicans joined Democrats in that vote, and the Senate later fell short of conviction on a 57-43 tally. Trump remains the only U.S. president impeached twice. Andrew Johnson was the first president impeached, and Bill Clinton was later impeached and acquitted.

The push has been carried in part by Rep. Darrell Issa, who introduced a 2026 House resolution aimed at expunging both impeachments, with Speaker Mike Johnson also signaling support for revisiting the issue. For Trump’s allies, the appeal is not that Congress can change what happened, but that it can formally bless a competing interpretation of it. That makes the effort less a legal remedy than a struggle over the historical record itself.