President Andrew Jackson’s enemies hated him.
In fact, on March 28, 1834 — with just over two years left in his second and final term (Jackson’s successor and vice president, Martin Van Buren, would be sworn in on March 4, 1837) — his foes in the United States Senate officially censured the seventh president.
Why?
The official history of the U.S. Senate says the Senate voted “to censure Jackson for actions related to his plan to remove government funds from the Bank of the United States.”
The president’s enemies were not about to let this Jackson attack on the Bank of the United States stand. While they did not impeach him, they censured him, and they wanted the censure to stain Jackson’s presidential record for eternity.
But the Senate history actually records this:
For the next three years, Jackson's ally, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton … worked tirelessly to remove this blot from Jackson’s record and from the Senate’s official Journal. Early in 1837, with less than two months remaining in the president’s final term, and with majority control back in Democratic hands, Benton called for a vote. By a five-vote margin, the Senate agreed to reverse its earlier censure. On January 16, 1837, the secretary of the Senate carried the 1834 Journal into the Chamber, drew careful lines around its text, and wrote, “Expunged by order of the Senate.”
Pandemonium swept the galleries. When a disgruntled Whig sympathizer ignored the presiding officer’s repeated calls for order, that officer directed the sergeant at arms to arrest the man and haul him onto the Senate floor. After the Senate voted to free the demonstrator, he approached the presiding officer and demanded, “Am I not permitted to speak in my own defense?” The outraged presiding officer ordered him removed from the Chamber and the Senate adjourned amidst the tumult.
The tale of the “expunged” Jackson censure — the only time in history this was done — comes to mind when seeing headlines today like this one from USA Today:
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House GOP want to expunge Donald Trump’s two impeachments.
What it means?
The story reports:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., expressed support Friday for a symbolic resolution to expunge former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments from the House record.
McCarthy told reporters he would back House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., in their effort to expunge both impeachments. However, he said their resolutions would need to go through the committee process first before getting a vote on the floor.
McCarthy’s decision to back the resolution demonstrates that Trump, who was impeached twice in office and indicted twice since departing office, still maintains broad support among House Republicans as he stages a bid for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Trump was first impeached in 2019 after encouraging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dig up political dirt on then-White House rival Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign — while Trump was withholding U.S. military aid to Ukraine as it faced Russia.
He was impeached a second time for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but McCarthy denied that supporting a resolution to expunge the impeachments was an attempt to gloss over Trump’s role that day.
To cut to the chase?
The first impeachment came about because Trump was on to what all of America has since come to understand. Namely, that Joe Biden, using his official government positions, was corruptly allowing — encouraging — his son Hunter to exploit his public offices for the Biden family's profit. And Trump wanted to get to the bottom of it.
For that, the impeachment crowd punished him for doing exactly what an honest president should do — get the truth. Investigate. Only now is Congress, thanks to House Republicans, uncovering the dirty business of Biden’s Ukraine shenanigans that in fact, according to that FBI informant, resulted in this headline in the New York Post:
Biden $10M bribe file released: Burisma chief said he was ‘coerced’ to pay Joe, ‘stupid’ Hunter in bombshell allegations
And right there is the reason to strike Trump impeachment No. 1 from the record.
The second impeachment was because Trump exercised his free speech rights in urging supporters on Jan. 6 to “protest peacefully and patriotically” and “fight like hell” for their country.
If that is an impeachable offense, every member of Congress who has urged their supporters of this or that cause to protest, not to mention told them to “fight like hell,” should be expelled from Congress.
Here, for example, is Senate Democrat Leader Senator Chuck Schumer vowing that his supporters should “fight like hell” to get a police reform bill passed.
Not to mention that Schumer once stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and directly threatened Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, saying: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” That gem resulted in a direct rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.
Out there in Michigan only a month ago was this headline about Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer:
Whitmer rolls out ‘Fight Like Hell’ PAC to play in 2024 federal races
Are impeachment charges looming for Whitmer? Of course not.
All of which is to say, borrowing from that long ago Andrew Jackson precedent, the two Trump impeachments should get another vote in the now-Republican House. Exactly as Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggests.
Just as the Democrats of 1837 used their new Senate majority to go on the record and expunge the highly partisan Andrew Jackson censure for the historical record, so too now should the Trump impeachments be forever noted as being reversed by the House.
Will that erase them from the record? No.
But it will make it clear — on the historical record — that the partisan Trump haters of today, just like the partisan Jackson haters of yesteryear, are seriously partisan.
Not to mention seriously wrong.
via spectator