Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama has introduced a resolution that would formally expunge both impeachments of President Donald Trump from the congressional record, calling them "maliciously false" and driven by political motives rather than constitutional grounds. If the House approves the measure, it would mark the first time in American history that Congress has voted to strike presidential impeachment proceedings after the fact.
Moore filed the resolution on Friday, as Fox News first reported, targeting both the December 2019 impeachment over Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the January 2021 impeachment tied to the Capitol breach. The Alabama Republican framed the effort as long overdue, arguing that both proceedings were constitutionally defective and weaponized for partisan ends.
The resolution lays out a detailed case that neither impeachment met the constitutional standard for "high crimes and misdemeanors." On the first impeachment, Moore's measure argues that the House relied on secondhand testimony rather than direct evidence of wrongdoing during Trump's July 2019 call with Zelensky. Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.
On the second impeachment, the resolution contends that the House acted with extraordinary speed and without standard procedural safeguards. The House voted to impeach Trump on January 13, 2021, just seven days after the Capitol breach, without holding committee hearings or allowing the president's legal team to mount a defense. The Senate acquitted Trump a second time, in February 2021, with several Republican senators voting to acquit on the grounds that trying a president who had already left office raised serious constitutional questions.
Moore characterized the impeachments in stark terms. He stated that they were "maliciously false" and "brought forward without evidence of actual wrongdoing." He added that the proceedings were "used as political tools to damage a sitting president rather than uphold the Constitution."
No Congress has ever voted to expunge a presidential impeachment. The Constitution grants the House the "sole Power of Impeachment" under Article I, but it says nothing about whether a future House can reverse or nullify the work of a prior one. That silence creates a gray area that legal scholars on both sides of the aisle have debated for years.
Supporters of expungement argue that the House retains inherent authority over its own records and proceedings. If a simple majority can impeach, the logic goes, a simple majority can also vote to declare a prior impeachment void. Critics counter that impeachment is a completed constitutional act, not a pending resolution, and that expungement would set a destabilizing precedent allowing each new Congress to rewrite history based on shifting political winds.
The resolution does not require Senate approval. Because expungement targets the House's own institutional record rather than imposing a legal consequence, Moore's office has taken the position that a House-only vote would be sufficient. Constitutional law experts have not reached consensus on that reading, and the question has never been tested.
The broader context of legal and political battles surrounding the Trump impeachment era continues to generate new developments. Tulsi Gabbard's Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department involving the 2019 impeachment whistleblower and a former inspector general, underscoring that the fallout from those proceedings is far from settled.
Moore tied his resolution to a wider critique of how Democrats used congressional power during the Trump years. He argued that the impeachments inflicted lasting damage on public trust in the legislative process and that failing to address them would leave a tainted precedent on the books for future Congresses to exploit.
"The American people saw through these impeachments from the beginning," Moore said. He pointed to Trump's acquittals in both Senate trials as evidence that even the existing constitutional process rejected the charges brought by the House Democratic majority.
The Alabama congressman also drew a line between the impeachment efforts and what he described as a pattern of legal actions aimed at Trump before, during, and after his first term. That pattern has drawn scrutiny from multiple angles in recent months. A Georgia lawmaker, for instance, has raised questions about a $2 million Biden-era DOJ grant tied to the timeline of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's prosecution of Trump.
Moore framed expungement not as a symbolic gesture but as a corrective measure. He argued that leaving both impeachments on the record without challenge would signal that the House can impeach a president on thin evidence with no lasting institutional consequence for doing so.
Republicans hold a narrow majority in the current Congress, which means Moore's resolution could theoretically reach the floor if GOP leadership decides to bring it up for a vote. Speaker Mike Johnson has not publicly committed to scheduling the measure, and no timeline for a floor vote has been announced.
The resolution's fate may depend on whether Republican leadership views expungement as a productive use of floor time or a distraction from the party's legislative priorities, including spending, border security, and tax reform. Some House Republicans have expressed enthusiasm for the idea in the past. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a similar expungement resolution during the previous Congress, though it never received a floor vote.
Democrats are expected to oppose the measure unanimously. House Democrats have defended both impeachments as constitutionally sound and have argued that expungement would amount to an erasure of accountability. No Democratic co-sponsors have signed onto Moore's resolution.
The resolution arrives as Trump continues to face legal challenges on other fronts. The Second Circuit recently declined to rehear the $83 million E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict, keeping that case alive as Trump's legal team weighs further appeals.
The core tension behind Moore's resolution is whether expungement strengthens or weakens the constitutional order. Proponents say it restores integrity to the impeachment power by acknowledging that two specific uses of that power were abusive. Opponents say it degrades the impeachment power by making its consequences reversible through ordinary majority votes.
If the resolution passes, future Congresses could invoke the same mechanism to expunge or attempt to nullify other official acts, from censure votes to committee findings. That possibility has made some institutionalists in both parties uneasy, even among those who believe the Trump impeachments were politically motivated.
Investigators and oversight bodies continue to probe various threads connected to Trump-era congressional battles. House Oversight has been active on several fronts, including scheduling depositions of high-profile political figures as part of ongoing inquiries that overlap with the same period of intense partisan conflict.
Moore's resolution does not carry the force of law in the traditional sense. It would not reverse the Senate's trial proceedings, alter any judicial record, or affect Trump's legal status. What it would do is formally declare, as a matter of the House's institutional record, that both impeachments were illegitimate and should be treated as void.
The resolution has been referred to the House Rules Committee, which will decide whether to advance it. If the committee reports it favorably, Republican leadership would then need to schedule floor time. A simple majority vote would be required for passage.
No hearings have been scheduled on the measure. Moore has urged his colleagues to act quickly, arguing that every day the impeachments remain on the record reinforces a precedent he considers dangerous. Whether leadership shares that sense of urgency remains an open question.
The Senate would have no formal role in the process under Moore's framework, though individual senators from both parties would almost certainly weigh in publicly. Trump himself has long called both impeachments "hoaxes" and has encouraged Republican efforts to address them.
When Congress treats impeachment as a disposable political weapon, the only question left is whether anyone will hold the institution accountable for pulling the trigger. Moore's resolution is a bet that this House will.
