President Trump is pressing congressional Republicans to pass a resolution that would symbolically erase both impeachments from his first term, a move that carries no legal force and that the Constitution does not provide for, but one that would hand him a formal repudiation of two proceedings he has long called politically motivated.
The effort, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a White House official, would effectively ask Congress to declare that the impeachments should be nullified from the historical record. No resolution text has been publicly released, and no specific Republican sponsor has been named.
The push lands as Republicans prepare for midterm elections in November, a timing detail that has drawn fire from critics on both sides of the aisle, though for very different reasons.
A congressional resolution of the kind Trump and his allies are seeking would amount to a formal statement of disapproval of the original impeachment votes. It would not reverse any constitutional action. The Constitution contains no procedure for undoing an impeachment once the House has voted on articles.
Trump was the first president in American history to be impeached twice. He was only the third president ever impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House could vote on articles of impeachment over Watergate.
The first impeachment, in 2019, centered on allegations that Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. The Senate acquitted him in February 2020. The second came after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when members of Congress accused Trump of inciting an insurrection. The Senate acquitted him again after he had already left office.
Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly cast both impeachments as part of a broader campaign by political opponents and government institutions to undermine him. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson framed the resolution effort in exactly those terms.
"Trump-deranged Democrats have spent years launching phoney attacks against the president and weaponising the government against him. It's no surprise that sane individuals are recognising these sham efforts and are interested in undoing those shameful actions. President Trump remains focused on one thing: doing what's best for the American people."
Jackson's statement reflects the White House's consistent posture: the impeachments were partisan exercises, and the expungement resolution would formalize that judgment. Whether enough Republicans in both chambers would vote for such a resolution, and whether leadership would bring it to the floor, remains an open question.
Democrats responded to the news not with alarm but with something closer to glee. California Rep. Ted Lieu, who served as one of the House impeachment managers during Trump's second trial, posted on X urging Republicans to proceed.
"As a former impeachment manager, I plead with you to please bring up Trump's prior impeachments. Let's hold hearings, call witnesses and show videos to remind people what happened. And please make every Republican in a swing district vote on this. Thank you."
Lieu's message was blunt political calculation. Any floor debate or committee hearing on expungement would inevitably revisit the underlying conduct, the Ukraine call, the Capitol breach, the Senate trial testimony. Democrats see that as a gift heading into a midterm cycle where they need to put swing-district Republicans on the defensive.
California Sen. Adam Schiff, who served as lead impeachment manager in the first trial, dismissed the effort outright. He said there is "no expunging the stain of Trump's two impeachments," adding that the push showed the president "cares little about the economic hardships of the American people. His priority is only, ever, Donald Trump."
That line of attack, that the resolution is a vanity project while voters face kitchen-table pressures, is the one Democrats clearly intend to run on. Whether it lands depends on whether Republican leaders actually schedule a vote, or whether the resolution quietly dies in committee.
The political risk is not lost on everyone in conservative media. CNN commentator SE Cupp, speaking on the network, questioned the wisdom of the timing.
"What are you thinking? He's not thinking ahead. All the reasons he was impeached get dredged up again, and we're all talking about it around a midterm election."
Cupp's concern points to a real tactical problem. Congressional Republicans have spent months trying to keep the focus on the administration's policy agenda and the political backlash it generates. An expungement debate would yank the spotlight back to 2019 and 2021, territory where the facts are contested, the footage is vivid, and the media environment favors Democrats.
That said, the counterargument from Trump's allies is straightforward: the impeachments were partisan from the start, the Senate acquitted him both times, and a formal resolution stating as much simply puts Congress on record with what most Republican voters already believe.
There is a difference between a symbolic gesture that rallies the base and a symbolic gesture that hands the opposition a microphone. The question is which one this turns out to be.
No matter what Congress does, the impeachments remain part of the constitutional record. The House voted. The Senate tried the cases. The acquittals stand. A resolution declaring the proceedings illegitimate would express the sense of the current Congress, nothing more.
That does not make the effort meaningless. Sense-of-Congress resolutions carry political weight even when they lack legal teeth. They force votes. They create campaign ads. They establish a party's official position on a contested chapter of history.
But the fact that the Constitution provides no mechanism for reversing an impeachment means the resolution would exist in a gray zone, a formal declaration without formal effect. Trump's critics will call it theater. His supporters will call it justice delayed. Neither side will change the other's mind.
The broader pattern is familiar. Congressional Republicans have increasingly used their majority to revisit grievances from the Trump era, demanding testimony on Democratic fundraising practices, pressing the DOJ on stalled investigations, and pushing for new probes into long-simmering controversies. The expungement resolution fits that mold: backward-looking in subject, forward-looking in political purpose.
Key details remain unknown. No resolution text has been made public. No committee has been identified to handle the measure. No timeline for a vote has been announced. The gap between a White House wish and a floor vote is wide, and Republican leadership has not publicly committed to scheduling the resolution.
The midterm calendar adds pressure in both directions. Trump wants the resolution as a statement of vindication before voters head to the polls. Democrats want the debate for exactly the same reason, but from the opposite angle.
The internal dynamics within the Republican conference will matter. Some members in safe districts may welcome the vote. Others in competitive seats may dread it. The kind of intra-party fractures that have already surfaced on other Trump-adjacent votes could easily repeat here.
And the broader question of party unity, tested repeatedly by everything from high-profile clashes between Trump and his own allies to fights over executive authority, will shape whether leadership risks the floor fight or quietly shelves the idea.
Trump was acquitted twice. The Senate verdicts are the constitutional last word. A resolution saying so would add a political exclamation point, but it would also reopen every door Democrats are eager to walk through.
The real question isn't whether the impeachments were political. Most of the country made up its mind on that years ago. The question is whether relitigating them six months before a midterm is the best use of a congressional majority that won't last forever.
