Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday night that Congress should expunge President Donald Trump's 2019 impeachment, and that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg's conduct on the bench "could very well be subject to impeachment" as well.
Tenney made the remarks on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show, tying both calls to a week that saw newly declassified intelligence documents, a federal appeals court rebuke of Boasberg, and a fresh push from Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri to begin impeachment proceedings against the judge.
The twin demands land at a moment when the institutional credibility of the first Trump impeachment and the independence of the federal judiciary are both under sharp scrutiny from the right. What connects them, in Tenney's telling, is a pattern: officials and judges acting on flawed or concealed information, with consequences that fell entirely on one side.
The catalyst for Tenney's call to expunge the impeachment is a set of documents recently declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Just the News reported that those documents showed the intelligence community's chief watchdog had flagged concerns about the CIA analyst who launched the 2019 impeachment proceedings with Ukraine policy-related allegations against Trump.
Those concerns, which included that the accuser had the "potential for bias," had provided false information in his initial complaint, and had animus toward conservatives inside Trump's circles, were kept classified and never made public during the congressional proceedings.
That last detail is the one that matters most. Congress voted to impeach a sitting president while material casting doubt on the accuser's credibility sat locked in a classified vault. Six years passed before the public saw it. As we previously reported on the declassified memos, the newly surfaced records raise pointed questions about what congressional leaders knew, and chose not to share, before the impeachment vote.
Tenney did not mince words about the accuser's conduct:
"This so-called whistleblower knew he didn't have the evidence. He used hearsay. He used poor intelligence, or what they call spy craft, in putting together statements and supporting documents that were not supportive of what they were trying to prove, but they covered it up."
She added that the information was deliberately kept from public view and from anyone who could challenge it, and that officials "went into this impeachment mode" regardless.
DNI Gabbard declassified the documents this week and on Monday went further, saying the accuser had "weaponized the whistle-blower process" to "manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump." That language goes well beyond a procedural critique, it frames the first impeachment as the product of a deliberate fabrication inside the intelligence community.
Tenney praised Gabbard's decision to release the records:
"I am just grateful to Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, for actually disclosing this information and seeing the really shoddy, poor intelligence work that was being done."
The FBI was listed among agencies that sharply criticized the withholding of evidence over the six-year period. That detail, the Bureau itself objecting to the suppression, adds institutional weight to the argument that the concealment was not routine classification but something more deliberate.
The broader pattern of intelligence-community figures acting against Trump while shielding their own conduct from scrutiny is not new. Former CIA Director John Brennan, for instance, called publicly for Trump's removal even as he faced a DOJ investigation over alleged lies to Congress about surveillance activities.
Tenney endorsed the idea floated by law professor and former Trump defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz that Trump might have grounds to seek expungement of the 2019 impeachment in the House of Representatives. "So I think Alan Dershowitz is on to something," she said.
She framed the argument in terms of institutional integrity, not just political loyalty:
"Historically, we need to show that we're going to stand up for the rule of law, for truth and justice. And this was unfairly done to President Trump."
The mechanism for expungement remains unclear. The Constitution does not explicitly provide for it, and no president's impeachment has ever been expunged. Dershowitz's legal theory, as previously covered, rests on the argument that newly surfaced evidence of concealed bias and fabricated support undermines the legitimacy of the original vote, a theory that would require the current House to act.
Whether Speaker Mike Johnson or the broader Republican conference would take up such a vote is an open question. But the political ground has shifted. In 2019, Democrats controlled the House and drove the impeachment timeline. Today, Republicans hold the chamber, the declassified documents are public, and a sitting member of the Intelligence Committee is calling for action on the record.
Tenney's second target was Judge James Boasberg, who has drawn sustained Republican criticism for a series of rulings against the Trump administration, several of which, the congresswoman noted, have been reversed on appeal.
This week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., sharply rebuked Boasberg, accusing him of abusing his judicial discretion by launching contempt proceedings against the Trump administration over its deportation of criminal illegal immigrants. The rebuke came as Sen. Schmitt on Wednesday urged the House to begin impeachment proceedings against the judge.
Tenney stopped short of formally calling for Boasberg's impeachment but left the door wide open:
"It looks like what Judge Boasberg has done is egregious and could very well be subject to impeachment under our laws and under the rules of conduct that actually are in place for judges on the federal level."
Boasberg's background adds another layer. He previously served as chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the same FISA Court that approved surveillance warrants during the Trump-Russia investigation, warrants later found to have relied on flawed or misleading applications. That history makes him a particularly charged figure for Republicans who see a through-line from the Russia probe to the first impeachment to the current judicial resistance to Trump's immigration enforcement.
The pattern Tenney and Schmitt are pointing to is not subtle. A judge issues rulings that obstruct executive action on deportations, gets reversed by a higher court, and then faces calls for impeachment from both chambers. Whether those calls gain traction depends on whether House leadership sees the political and constitutional case as strong enough to act, or whether, as with many such proposals, the rhetoric outpaces the votes.
Several questions hang over both prongs of Tenney's argument. The name of the CIA analyst at the center of the 2019 impeachment has not been publicly confirmed in this reporting. The specific contents of the declassified documents beyond the broad descriptions, potential for bias, false information, animus toward conservatives, have not been fully detailed. And the precise appellate decision rebuking Boasberg was not identified by case name.
On the expungement front, no concrete legislative vehicle has been introduced. Tenney's remarks were made on a television program, not on the House floor, and no vote has been scheduled. The distance between a cable-news call to action and a roll-call vote is often vast.
Still, the political dynamics favor at least sustained pressure. Democrats who built careers on transparency during the Trump years now face uncomfortable questions about what was hidden during the very proceedings they championed. And Republicans, armed with declassified evidence and an appeals court willing to check a district judge, have more leverage than they did even a year ago.
The broader context is worth noting. Democrats have repeatedly pursued extraordinary measures to remove or constrain Trump, from impeachment to 25th Amendment resolutions, often on thin evidentiary grounds. If the declassified records show what Tenney and Gabbard say they show, the first impeachment may join that list of overreaches that looked bold at the time and reckless in hindsight.
When the people who launched a presidential impeachment hid the evidence that their own star witness was biased and unreliable, the question isn't whether Congress should revisit the record. It's why it took this long.
