Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has introduced a House resolution that would formally erase both impeachments of President Donald Trump, a move he says is long overdue given what he describes as politically motivated processes built on false information and procedural misconduct.

The resolution, designated H.Res.1211, was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and has already drawn the backing of Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, along with more than 20 Republican cosponsors. If it advances, it would declare both impeachments, approved by the House in 2019 and 2021, formally "expunged as if such Article had never passed the full House of Representatives."

No sitting president has ever had an impeachment reversed by a subsequent Congress. Issa's effort marks the third attempt to do so, following similar resolutions in 2022 and 2023 that never received hearings, markups, or floor votes and died at the end of the 118th Congress. This time, supporters say the political landscape and the evidentiary record have shifted in their favor.

Issa's case: 'Where do you go to get your reputation back?'

Issa, in an interview with Fox News Digital, laid out his rationale in blunt terms. He framed the impeachments not as legitimate exercises of congressional authority but as accusations grounded in withheld and fabricated evidence, accusations that, unlike a criminal indictment, carry no formal mechanism for reversal.

"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."

The California Republican argued that newly available evidence has fundamentally changed the picture. He pointed to declassified material and what he described as misconduct by those who brought the original charges.

"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."

That framing, treating the expungement vote as the congressional equivalent of a front-page retraction, runs through Issa's public statements on the resolution. He wants the House to formally acknowledge that the processes were tainted, not merely that the Senate declined to convict.

The first impeachment: declassified documents and the whistleblower

H.Res.1211 devotes considerable attention to the 2019 impeachment, which arose from Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president. The resolution points to newly declassified material that it says undermines the credibility of the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint triggered the inquiry.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the declassification earlier this year. In a press release, Gabbard described a "coordinated effort" within the intelligence community "to manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump in 2019."

The resolution contends the whistleblower lacked firsthand knowledge of the events in question, 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. The Washington Examiner reported that supporters of the resolution are specifically tying their push to the declassified materials alleging the whistleblower coordinated with congressional Democrats before filing the complaint, a claim Republicans say proves the process was politically tainted from the start.

Issa told Fox News Digital that the first impeachment "broke every House rule." A source close to his office said the episode "reflects so poorly on the House" and "represents an example of what's gone wrong in the Capitol and in Washington."

The broader question of how impeachment has been wielded as a political instrument is not new. Trump himself has questioned whether Democratic leaders should face impeachment for what he views as their own institutional provocations, a sign of how deeply the tool has become entangled in partisan warfare.

The second impeachment: two days, no witnesses

The resolution's treatment of the 2021 impeachment, which charged Trump with incitement of insurrection following the January 6 Capitol breach, is equally pointed. H.Res.1211 argues the process was rushed and procedurally flawed, noting that the House moved from introduction to passage in just two days.

No fact witnesses testified. No extended investigation took place. The resolution says the compressed timeline denied Trump basic due process, a charge that carries particular weight given the gravity of the accusation itself.

Issa was direct about the stakes of that charge. He told Fox News Digital:

"They impeached him for essentially an insurrection, a true high crime, and it's false."

He argued that previous expungement efforts "didn't have what we have", referring to the declassified material and what he described as a more complete evidentiary record. The goal now, Issa said, is to put "the misconduct of the accusation" on trial rather than the president himself.

The impeachment vote in 2021 remains a live political issue within the Republican Party. In Louisiana, Rep. Julia Letlow has challenged Sen. Bill Cassidy over his impeachment vote, illustrating how the decision continues to define intra-party contests years later.

Jordan backs the effort

The endorsement from Judiciary Chairman Jordan gives the resolution something its predecessors lacked: a clear path through committee. Jordan controls the panel to which H.Res.1211 was referred, and his public support suggests the resolution could at least receive a hearing, a milestone the 2022 and 2023 versions never reached.

Jordan's statement to Fox News Digital was unequivocal.

"Democrats weaponized impeachment against President Trump with politically motivated charges. We applaud Chairman Issa for leading the fight to expunge this sham from the record."

Whether Jordan moves to schedule a markup or floor vote remains to be seen. The resolution's list of more than 20 cosponsors, all House Republicans, signals real interest within the conference, but the narrow GOP majority means leadership would need near-unanimous support to pass it on a party-line vote.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment. No response was reported.

The legal and constitutional debate

The concept of expunging an impeachment has no clear constitutional precedent. Critics, described in reporting as including legal scholars, have questioned whether one Congress can undo the formal actions of a prior Congress. The Constitution grants the House the "sole Power of Impeachment" but says nothing about reversing that power after the fact.

Issa acknowledged the gap directly. "The fact is that the Constitution doesn't spell out what to do when you've wrongfully indicted somebody," he said.

His answer is essentially political rather than judicial: bring the evidence to the House floor, make the case publicly, and let the vote speak for itself. Whether the expungement would carry legal force or serve primarily as a political statement is an open question the resolution's text does not fully resolve.

The broader pattern of institutional conflict surrounding Trump, from shakeups at the Justice Department to ongoing battles with congressional Democrats, provides the backdrop against which this resolution will be debated.

Issa framed the effort as a matter of basic fairness, not merely partisan advantage. He drew an analogy to press accountability:

"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."

He added: "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."

What comes next

The resolution now sits with the Judiciary Committee. With Jordan's backing, it has a sponsor in the chairman's seat, a structural advantage the previous attempts never enjoyed. But floor passage in a closely divided House is far from guaranteed, and any vote would force every Republican to go on record.

Democrats will almost certainly oppose the measure and frame it as an attempt to rewrite history. Republicans backing the resolution will argue the opposite: that history was written dishonestly the first time, and the record deserves correction.

Issa said the real objective is transparency. He wants "the facts and the reality that there was misconduct in the process" to get a full hearing, and he wants the American public watching when it does. Whether the 119th Congress delivers that hearing, or whether H.Res.1211 meets the same quiet end as its predecessors, will say a great deal about how seriously the current majority takes the charge that impeachment was turned into a weapon.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to govern, brokering international agreements, reshaping federal agencies, and operating under the weight of two impeachments his allies say were built on lies. If Issa's resolution goes nowhere, the stain stays on the books. If it passes, Congress will have admitted something Washington almost never admits: that it got it wrong.