WASHINGTON: The top Republican in the US House of Representatives said on Thursday he did not promise Donald Trump that he would pass a measure aimed at expunging the former president’s two impeachments.

       “There’s no deal,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told NBC following a report by the Politico news outlet that he had made such an agreement with Trump, the current front-runner for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

       Trump’s House allies are rallying around him as he braces for a pair of potential criminal indictments for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat — one from US Special Counsel Jack Smith and another in Fulton County, Georgia.

       No. 4 House Republican Elise Stefanik and hardline Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene last month introduced a bill aimed at expunging Trump’s historic two impeachments, from 2019 and 2021. Both impeachments passed the then-Democratic-controlled House but in each case Senate Republicans voted to acquit him.

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       There is no historical precedent for expunging an impeachment, but Greene said that would not stop her from pushing the measure forward.

       Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2023