House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) suggested supporting a resolution to scrap the two impeachments brought against former President Trump.
Introduced by House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the resolution would expunge a House vote that fought to impeach Trump from the White House.
In 2019, lawmakers attempted to boot Trump from office after charging him with obstruction of justice and abuse of power over a phone call in which he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden.
Another was in 2021, after Democrats and Republicans accused Trump of inciting violence during the January 6 Capitol Hill protests.
“I support that,” McCarthy said. “We’ll see; it has to go through a committee. I voted against both impeachments. The second impeachment had no due process.”
The House Speaker claimed that neither impeachment warranted enough facts to oust Trump from serving as president of the United States.
“I think it is appropriate, just as I thought before, that you should expunge it because it never should have gone through,” he told reporters.
Democrats successfully secured enough votes to impeach the former president twice. During the first vote, it passed without any Republican support. However, the second was different. Ten Republicans voted to impeach Trump for the Capitol Hill incident, which McCarthy claimed Trump should be held liable for the violence.
A few weeks later, McCarthy changed his tune on his previous comments, saying Trump did not “provoke” the protests.
The two Republicans who voted for the second impeachment— Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Rep. David Valadao (R-CA)— are still in the House. It is unclear whether they would support the reversal of their vote.
Greene and Stefanik hope to see a vote on the floor for the resolutions “soon,” adding that the bills are designed to reset the historical record “as if such Articles had never passed.”
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