US House Speaker McCarthy denies deal with Trump to expunge impeachments

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday said he did not make any promises to former President Donald Trump that he would get legislation passed that would erase Trump's two impeachments by the chamber when he was president.

"There's no deal," McCarthy, a Republican, told a reporter in the Capitol following a report by the Politico news outlet that he had made such an agreement with Trump, the current frontrunner for his party's 2024 presidential nomination.

The House, then controlled by Democrats, voted in 2019 and again in 2021 to impeach Trump, with the Senate acquitting him both times thanks to the votes of Republicans.

The House the first time charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden, who went on to win the 2020 presidential election, and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations. The second time it charged Trump with inciting an insurrection, relating to the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.

McCarthy voted against impeaching Trump both times. McCarthy on Thursday called both impeachments politically motivated and not based on evidence that Trump had committed a high crime or misdemeanor, as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.

McCarthy's remarks came after Politico reported that Trump was outraged at the speaker for withholding his endorsement of Trump's third run for the White House in 2024. In return for delaying that endorsement, according to Politico, McCarthy promised to work to pass legislation to "expunge" both impeachments.

Politico said McCarthy had promised to do so before Congress leaves for an August recess.

A Trump representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump, the only president to have been impeached twice, said on Tuesday he had received a letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith stating that he is a target of a grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. That would be his third criminal indictment since leaving office.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, additional reporting by Josephine Walker, Moira Warburton and Nathan Layne; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)