Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has filed a resolution, H.Res.1211, asking the House to expunge the two impeachments of President Donald Trump, arguing they were built on false and politically motivated claims. The measure was sent to the House Judiciary Committee and aims to use the House’s power over its records to erase the impeachments “as if such Article had never passed the full House of Representatives.” Backers say newly declassified material and procedural errors justify reopening the record and restoring the president’s reputation.
Issa says the point is to give the House and the public a clear hearing on what went wrong. “The fact is that the Constitution doesn’t spell out what to do when you’ve wrongfully indicted somebody,” Issa told Fox News Digital. “An impeachment is basically an indictment and it’s an indictment that you can’t really be acquitted from. If you are impeached by the House, famously where do you go to get your reputation back, is the question,”
“And that’s sort of a problem that we’re dealing with, which is that the president was wrongfully accused, the evidence is now out that there was withheld information and false information, but where do we go to unring this bell? And the answer is we go back to Congress and we go to the House floor and we have a vote.” Issa frames the resolution as a corrective vote meant to restore fairness to a broken process. He wants the congressional record updated so false accusations don’t keep shaping public life.
“More importantly,” Issa explained, is that he hopes his process will “make sure that the facts and the reality that there was misconduct in the process gets a hearing” because that’s “really where this becomes a big deal is that we really have to make our case in front of Congress and in front of the American people.” That intent drives the resolution’s focus on witnesses, records, and newly declassified documents. Supporters want a public reckoning, not just a symbolic footnote.
The resolution argues the 2019 impeachment leaned heavily on an anonymous complaint and other politically tinged reporting, and it points to declassified material that it says undermines the whistleblower’s credibility. It contends the whistleblower lacked firsthand knowledge, was assisted by other officials with alleged political bias, and that House investigators mishandled or misrepresented evidence while denying Trump the opportunity to confront his accusers. Those claims form the backbone of the case to expunge.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is cited by supporters for releasing documents she says show a coordinated effort within the intelligence community “to manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump in 2019.” Issa and allies argue those disclosures change the context for the original proceedings. They say newly visible facts reveal misconduct that should disqualify the impeachments from standing as fair historical judgments.
The 2021 impeachment is also criticized for speed and process. The resolution notes the House moved from introduction to passage in two days and did not conduct a full evidentiary process, and it says that brief constitutional hearings without fact witnesses denied the president basic due process. That procedural rush remains a central argument in favor of expungement.
“They impeached him for essentially an insurrection, a true high crime, and it’s false,” Issa said. Previous efforts in 2022 and 2023 to formally undo the impeachments stalled without hearings or floor votes, and Issa argues this new resolution is stronger and better supported than those earlier attempts. He says the difference now is evidence and momentum.
The move has high-level backing within the Republican conference, with House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan among the visible supporters. “Democrats weaponized impeachment against President Trump with politically motivated charges,” Jordan told Fox News Digital. “We applaud Chairman Issa for leading the fight to expunge this sham from the record.”
Dozens of House Republicans are listed as cosponsors, with more than 20 members signing on to the effort, and the list includes a range of conservatives from multiple states. Supporters point to the Constitution’s grant that the House has the “sole Power of Impeachment” as the basis for editing its own records. They say controlling the record is a necessary tool to correct past abuses.
Critics and some legal scholars counter that annotating records is different from erasing history and that an expungement would be largely symbolic. The debate now centers on whether a House vote can really undo the effect of an impeachment in public life or whether it mainly serves as political redress. Either way, Republicans backing Issa see this as an opportunity to put the evidence and process on full display.
“When you’ve been falsely accused, whether it’s days, weeks, months or years later, somebody should be just as interested in printing that retraction on the front page as they were in putting the original charge on the front page,” Issa explained. “And that’s what we’re trying to achieve, is to have the legitimate retraction receive at least some semblance of the same attention as the false accusations did.” The House will decide whether to take that step and give the president the public correction Republicans say he deserves.
