'Cannot revise history': Andrew Jackson saga shows futility of Trump expungement efforts

Former President Donald Trump is the first president to have been impeached twice – the first time after allegedly blackmailing the president of Ukraine to try to force him to announce an investigation of the Biden family, and the second over his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection, which he also may be criminally indicted for any day now.

Neither impeachment secured a conviction in the Senate or removal from office, although both times at least one Republican senator voted for conviction — the only times in U.S. history any senators voted to remove a president of their own party.

Now, House Republicans are pressing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to move forward with a resolution to "expunge" Trump's two impeachments — a measure which wouldn't have any formal effect but would allow Republicans to proclaim Trump's innocence.

As it turns out, supporters of President Andrew Jackson did something similar almost 200 years ago, wrote Joshua Zeitz for Politico Magazine. And he said that episode is a warning to Republicans that their plan is pointless.

Jackson, the founder of the Democratic Party who was known for authorizing a brutal genocide of Indian tribes and steering America through an early secession crisis, was never impeached. However, in 1832, he was censured by the Senate for dissolving the Second Bank of the United States before its charter expired, in defiance of the powers authorized by Congress.

Thomas Hart Benton, a one-time foe of Jackson who once nearly killed him in an 1813 street fight, turned ally when they served together in the Senate. As Jackson's presidency drew to a close, Benton pushed a resolution to expunge the censure after Democrats won control of the Senate in 1836, even supplying senators with food and drink until he secured the votes he needed.

However, wrote Zeitz, the removal of the censure ultimately meant nothing. "No retroactive act of the Senate could change the historical record. Today, historians remember Jackson’s role in usurping congressional authority to kill the bank, and they remember Jackson as the first president to face congressional rebuke for his conduct," he wrote.

Moreover, all the political fallout of Jackson's plot remained – it "hardened political lines in the 1830s and created a vibrant political debate between Democrats, who were comfortable with the exercise of strong executive authority, and Whigs, who, like their English namesakes, feared usurpation by elected and unelected kings who arrogated powers to themselves [from] the legislative branch."

The lesson for McCarthy is obvious, wrote Zeitz: "Practically speaking, [expunging Trump's impeachments is] a shallow political stunt, similar to Benton’s efforts to sooth Jackson’s notoriously fragile ego. Neither president was removed from office in the first instance, and much as one cannot mend a broken egg, a congressional resolution cannot revise history."