Trump Asks His Congressional Lackeys for Symbolic Expungement of His Two Impeachments
Donald Trump continues his efforts—including handing out pardons and removing documents from the DOJ website—to rewrite the history of his first term. The push gained new momentum in April, after the administration published documents related to his first impeachment that Trump’s allies claimed undermined the witnesses against him. Now he is pressuring Republican lawmakers to symbolically vote to expunge his two impeachments from the record.
The Wall Street Journal has the story:
President Trump and his allies have discussed pushing lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding his first-term impeachments, according to people familiar with the matter.
The resolution would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a matter that has dogged him since his first term, part of a broader effort to burnish his presidential legacy. It would have little legal significance, however, because the Constitution provides no procedure for undoing an impeachment, according to experts. …
“It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump said when asked about the resolution in a phone call this week with The Wall Street Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.”
Speaker Mike Johnson—who has already confirmed he discussed the resolution with Trump and his legal allies—seems inclined to indulge him rather than tell the president there is no constitutional mechanism for what he wants. What the Dear Leader wants, the Dear Leader gets from Trump’s Own Party.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.