Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) is warning Republicans not to tee up a House vote later this year that would “expunge” the two impeachments from President Donald Trump’s first term.
Bacon, a retiring centrist who has occasionally bucked congressional leadership, told the Washington Examiner that plans for the expungement votes would not be “well received” and that Republicans were better off pursuing a “noble” agenda centered on defense spending and reforms to legal immigration and Social Security.
“Not a wise idea,” he said. “There’s no time for vanity projects.” Bacon added that he would “very likely” oppose such a vote on the House floor.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has spoken with Trump and some of his allies in the legal world about how to erase the impeachments. A vote is not imminent but could take place sometime after the midterm elections, when Republicans will be defending a tenuous House majority.
There is no mechanism in the Constitution to reverse an impeachment, and some critics have called the idea “absurd.” But Republicans for years have proposed legislation to void them symbolically, and the push gained traction in April, after the Trump administration declassified documents that Republicans say undermine the credibility of the trials.
Trump was impeached by a Democratic-led House on abuse of power charges in 2019 over his alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Biden family. He was impeached again in 2021 over his conduct surrounding the Capitol riot.
In both cases, the GOP-led Senate acquitted him.
“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Johnson told the Wall Street Journal, calling expungement a “priority and something that Congress should make right.”
Republicans have just a three-seat majority in the House, making Bacon’s opposition notable. Any attempt to relitigate Trump’s behavior in office would prove controversial, even though most of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him in 2021 have since retired or been ousted from Congress.
Just two of those “yes” votes remain: Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and David Valadao (R-CA). Newhouse is retiring in January, while Valadao is competing for another term this fall.
HOW THUNE OVERCAME A TRUMP-SIZED ROADBLOCK TO FUNDING ICE
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who voted for impeachment in 2021 and sat on Democrats’ Jan. 6 commission, said on X Friday that Republicans can’t rewrite the “historical record,” whether a vote succeeds or not.
“A vote can’t erase what happened,” Kinzinger posted. “It can’t erase January 6th. And it can’t erase the record future generations will read.”