Kevin McCarthy wants to undo what the nation witnessed: impeachments of Donald Trump | Opinion

Kevin McCarthy’s House of Representatives has been buzzing lately over impeachments: Bringing a case against President Biden and expunging the two impeachments the House already passed against former President Donald Trump.

It would be precedent-setting if the House voted to expunge a previous House impeachment, and it is not at all clear that it can actually be done.

But McCarthy, the Republican House speaker from Bakersfield who presides over a slim GOP majority, is going along with this charade anyway by supporting two resolutions from the hard-right wing of his caucus - the same group that held up his confirmation as House Speaker until the 15th vote last January.

In this case, “hard-right” doesn’t begin to describe Elise Stefanik of New York and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the members of McCarthy’s caucus who are seeking to nullify the House’s impeachments of the former president.

Stefanik’s House resolution would expunge Trump’s 2021 impeachment over his inciting the Jan. 6 rioting at the U.S. Capitol. She says the House failed to prove he committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard for impeachment. Her resolution adds the House did not follow the proper legislative process nor afforded Trump any chance to respond to the charges.

Stefanik’s resolution is six pages and also recycles voter-fraud arguments that some Republicans have made since Trump lost the 2020 election. By contrast, Greene’s measure is one-and-half-pages long and simply says Trump should not have been impeached in 2019 for wrongful misconduct, namely trying to get the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on then-Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

In a press release, Stefanik makes clear the goal here: “The resolutions would expunge the unconstitutional impeachments of President Trump as if such Articles of Impeachment had never passed the full House of Representatives.”

McCarthy plays the game

These resolutions were introduced last Friday and McCarthy responded to them by telling a group of reporters that they are “appropriate. Just as I thought before — that you should expunge it because it never should have gone through.”

McCarthy explained that the impeachment in 2019 simply should not have been brought. The 2021 impeachment “had no due process,” he said. He voted against both impeachments when they occurred.

The Bee Editorial Board sent Speaker McCarthy’s office an email with these questions: Why does the speaker support this step? If expunging occurred, would it set a bad precedent? How can those votes be undone, when in fact, they took place? The speaker has not responded.

However, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Reuters news service that the Constitution has no provision for removing impeachments.

“It is not like a constitutional DUI. Once you are impeached, you are impeached,” Turley told Reuters.

Dangerous precedent

The Associated Press reported that McCarthy did not indicate he would move forward quickly to bring the two resolutions to votes on the House floor.

He did, however, sideline a new proposal of Lauren Boebert of Colorado, another hard-right GOP member, that calls for impeaching Biden. She and other far-right members think Biden is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his handling of U.S. border security with Mexico.

Greene has also introduced articles of impeachment against Biden, members of his cabinet and the FBI director.

That the expungement resolutions are even viable is the result of McCarthy having just a 10-seat GOP majority in the House. He made concessions to hard-right members like Greene and Stefanik to win the speakership.

It’s ironic given that in the days following the Jan. 6 attack, McCarthy told a group of GOP leaders, “I have had it with this guy,” meaning Trump. McCarthy denies saying it, but The New York Times has a recording of him making that statement.

That McCarthy is going along with the Stefanik-Greene resolutions demonstrates the weakness of his standing as House Speaker. The hard right of his own party embarrassed him and made him sit through 15 votes before McCarthy finally ascended to the job of his dreams. It’s too bad that the price of admission is participating in an attempted whitewashing of Trump’s soiled record as the only chief executive to ever be impeached twice.

If McCarthy were a strong House Speaker, he would toss the Stefanik-Greene resolutions in the trash where they belong. Instead, McCarthy is supporting the garbage — a terrible look for him and for the House of Representatives.