Trump Wants His Impeachments 'Expunged.' History Says That Changes Nothing.

The Scheme

According to a Wall Street Journal report, President Trump has spoken with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) about formally "expunging" his two House impeachments. Attorney Alan Dershowitz is reportedly involved in building the legal rationale.

Trump's stated justification is straightforward: "It should be done because I did nothing wrong," he told the Journal.

What Precedent Actually Shows

This is not a completely invented concept. The closest historical parallel involves Andrew Jackson, a president Trump has publicly admired. In 1834, Sen. Henry Clay (W–Ky.) led the Senate to formally censure Jackson for firing his Treasury secretary and defying a Senate information request during the fight over the Second Bank of the United States. The censure resolution stated that Jackson "has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both."

Jackson protested loudly. Three years later, once Jacksonian Democrats regained the Senate majority, his allies voted to expunge the censure from the Senate Journal.

A clerk black-lined the censure text and wrote "Expunged by order of the Senate" across the page. The original censure remained clearly visible underneath. The underlying record was not destroyed. It was annotated. History did not change.

What It Would Actually Accomplish

Rep. Don Bacon (R–Neb.) told the Wall Street Journal flatly: "It's silly. What happened is history."

On the mechanics, he's correct. House impeachment functions as a constitutional censure. A subsequent House resolution saying "never mind" doesn't alter the vote tallies, the transcripts, the witness testimony, or the historical record. It adds a notation to a document that already exists.

As Reason noted in its coverage of this story, the Jackson episode offers the clearest guide to what expungement actually produces: a symbolic counter-statement sitting next to the original, with both visible to anyone who looks.

There is also a separation-of-powers question that expungement proponents don't cleanly answer. The Senate acquitted Trump in both impeachment trials, meaning he faced no removal and no disqualification. The House impeachments are recorded legislative acts. Whether a later House majority can retroactively nullify a prior House majority's constitutional action has no definitive legal answer, because it has never been tested in court in this specific form.

The Democratic Calculation

On the other side of this, Democratic leaders are not exactly champing at the bit to run the impeachment play again if they retake Congress.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii), the likely Democratic whip in a Democratic Senate, told CNN's Inside Politics: "I think it's very likely predictable how everyone would vote." That's a polite way of saying a Senate conviction remains a fantasy in any remotely divided chamber.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.), who would chair the House Judiciary Committee under a Democratic House majority, described impeachment as "one more tool in the toolkit, and we will use it if we need to use it," according to Reason. Not exactly a battle cry.

The concern from critics of impeachment-as-strategy is straightforward. Repeated impeachment attempts without realistic conviction prospects can trivialize the mechanism, turn it into a partisan counter-punch tool rather than a constitutional check, and exhaust public attention. That concern applies equally to Democratic impeachment drives and to Republican expungement theater. Both treat a serious constitutional instrument as a messaging operation.

That said, the fact that conviction is politically unlikely doesn't make an impeachment vote constitutionally illegitimate. The House has the sole power of impeachment. It exercised that power twice. Those votes are part of the record regardless of what any future House majority says about them.

The Real Question

The expungement push is best understood as a legacy project, not a legal remedy. Trump faces no active legal consequence from the impeachment votes themselves. He was acquitted by the Senate both times. His eligibility to hold office was not affected.

What expungement would produce, if passed, is a dueling notation in the Congressional record: one entry saying "impeached," another saying "expunged by House resolution." Both would exist. Historians, courts, and the public would see both.

Whether Johnson will actually bring such a resolution to the floor, and whether it would survive procedural challenges or legal scrutiny, remains an open question. The sources do not indicate any vote has been scheduled.