Impeaching Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] [H. Res. 1575 Introduced in House (IH)]

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119th CONGRESS 2d Session H. RES. 1575

Impeaching Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

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IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

September 24, 2026

Mr. Cohen submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

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RESOLUTION

Impeaching Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate: Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

article i: undermining democracy--sowing doubt in elections

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States by repeatedly and knowingly spreading false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, soliciting and pressuring election officials to unlawfully alter election results in his favor, and by baselessly casting doubt on the security and accuracy of the 2026 midterm elections. In so doing, Donald J. Trump intentionally undermined public confidence in United States self-government and endeavored to delegitimize any unfavorable electoral outcome. These efforts were intended to unconstitutionally maintain elected office and unlawfully exercise governmental authority. These persistent and deliberate efforts constitute a pattern of conduct. Time and time again, Federal agencies have independently concluded that the 2020 election was secure, perhaps the most secure in United States history. No credible evidence shows that foreign interference with election systems, or any irregularities or misconduct, compromised the integrity of the election and its results. Rather, evidence from Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation demonstrated that Donald J. Trump was told directly, by his own senior advisors, and State and Federal election officials, that his repeated claims of a stolen election were false. Special Counsel Jack Smith's evidence demonstrates Donald J. Trump knew these claims were false. Donald J. Trump continued his campaign of delegitimization by mocking and threatening those who exposed his baseless efforts to undermine confidence in the core infrastructure of our democracy. This conduct includes the following: (1) On July 16, 2026, in an unprecedented address from the East Room of the White House, Donald J. Trump delivered remarks to the Nation which were designed to revive unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen and cast doubt on the security of the upcoming midterm elections. Citing purported ``shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure'', Donald J. Trump declassified and released documents alongside the speech. Those documents did not support his claims, and independent fact-checkers found he offered no evidence of the widespread fraud he alleged. (2) During that same address, Donald J. Trump threatened that broadcasters who declined to air his remarks should lose their licenses, further demonstrating that the speech was not a good-faith exercise in election security, but rather an effort to coerce favorable coverage, amplify falsehoods, and sow distrust in the integrity of our elections. (3) In repeating such false claims, Donald J. Trump knowingly perpetuates harassment, threats, and violence directed against election officials. Since 2016, when Donald J. Trump first appeared on the ballot for President of the United States and began alleging that elections were rigged against him, attacks on election officials and workers have grown markedly. A 2026 survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found that a third of local election officials knew a colleague who had resigned at least in part out of fear for their safety or because of threats or intimidation, that a majority feared politically motivated interference with their work, and that nearly half were concerned about politically motivated investigations of themselves or their peers. Such conduct has chased experienced, nonpartisan election administrators from their posts and driven away civically minded volunteers alike, degrading the electoral infrastructure that Donald J. Trump claims he is trying to protect. (4) On January 28, 2026, at Donald J. Trump's direction, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant at the Fulton County, Georgia Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, seizing physical ballots, ballot images, tabulator tapes, and voter rolls from the 2020 election in a county he lost and had baselessly accused of fraud for more than 5 years. Donald J. Trump dispatched Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, an official statutorily barred from participating in domestic law enforcement, whose office exists to coordinate and analyze foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, not to police United States ballot boxes, to Atlanta to personally oversee the search warrant execution. In that episode, Gabbard used her personal cellphone to call Donald J. Trump directly so that he could speak to the agents by speakerphone and personally thank them for their work. By turning an instrumentality of national security, one statutorily committed exclusively to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence work, toward the domestic seizure of ballots from a five-year-old, twice-certified election, Donald J. Trump demonstrated his willingness to turn the machinery of Federal intelligence and law enforcement against the ballot box itself whenever he refuses to accept a result. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump has undermined the peaceful transfer of power that is the foundation of United States constitutional democracy, sown distrust in the electoral process without factual basis, directed the instruments of Federal law enforcement and intelligence toward the physical seizure of ballots from an election already settled for half a decade, and laid the rhetorical and operational groundwork to contest any electoral outcome unfavorable to his party in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, all in contravention of the republican structure of government at the core of the United States Constitution that Donald J. Trump swore to protect and uphold. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article ii: abuse of power--waging war on iran without congressional approval

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and Article I of the Constitution, which vests in Congress alone the power to declare war, by ordering repeated military strikes against Iran without congressional authorization, in defiance of the War Powers Resolution and Congress' votes directing the withdrawal of forces from hostilities with Iran. This conduct includes the following: (1) On June 21 to 22, 2025, Donald J. Trump ordered coordinated strikes by B-2 bombers and cruise missiles against 3 major Iranian nuclear sites (Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan) without first seeking or obtaining congressional authorization for the use of military force, and without the 60 day notice- and-authorization process required by the War Powers Resolution. (2) In response, bipartisan majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed War Powers Resolutions in June 2026, directing the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against Iran absent explicit congressional authorization. This marked the first time both chambers ever passed such a resolution directing a President to withdraw forces from a war zone under the Act. Donald J. Trump disregarded this unprecedented bicameral, bipartisan rebuke, and in so doing usurped Congress' war-making authority. (3) After a brief pause in active hostilities, Donald J. Trump resumed strikes against Iran on July 7, 2026, notifying Congress only after the fact and asserting that the 60 day clock restarted with each new round of strikes. This flawed and disingenuous interpretation was designed to permit indefinite unilateral warfare while nominally complying with the Act's notice requirement. The pattern was intended to evade compliance, not respect the Constitution's structure or Federal law. (4) Article I, section 8 of the Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress alone, and no statute extends to strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities or the sustained bombing campaign that followed. Donald J. Trump refused to identify any specific congressional authorization for the June 2025 strikes or their July 2026 resumption, relying instead on his assertion that Article II provides authority to commit the Nation to war. Such a reading purposefully disregards the plain words of the Constitution and centuries of constitutional practice that Donald J. Trump swore to protect and uphold. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump has arrogated to himself the power to initiate and continue war against a foreign nation, a power the Framers deliberately withheld from a single individual and vested exclusively in Congress, and has disregarded the considered judgment of both chambers of Congress that hostilities should end. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article iii: abuse of power--extrajudicial killings in international waters of venezuela

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and the laws of the United States by ordering and directing the United States military to conduct dozens of lethal strikes against small vessels in international waters, killing well over 100 people without charge, trial, or any judicial process, based on the President's own unilateral and largely unverified assertions that the occupants were drug traffickers or ``narcoterrorists''. As President of the United States, Donald J. Trump is bound by the Constitution and laws of the United States and international treaty obligations, including the right to due process, Congress' authority to regulate the military, and the law of war. This conduct includes the following: (1) Beginning September 2, 2025, Donald J. Trump ordered a strike that killed all 11 people aboard a vessel he described on Truth Social as carrying ``narcoterrorists''. Over the following months, the Administration carried out dozens of additional strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing more than 100 people, without any of the victims having been charged with a crime, brought before a court, or afforded any opportunity to contest the Government's characterization of them, the hallmarks of due process. (2) These strikes constituted extrajudicial killings, in direct contravention of international and domestic law, carried out against unidentified individuals in international waters, without any imminent threat to the United States or its Armed Forces, without warning or opportunity to surrender, and without any subsequent judicial or independent review of the Government's basis for the killings. The President's only public justification consisted of repeating his own prior assertions, not evidence subject to the scrutiny the Constitution requires. (3) A senior White House official publicly acknowledged that the strikes were also intended to help topple the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, contradicting the Administration's official justification that the strikes were a narrow anti-narcotics operation and confirming that Donald J. Trump used lethal military force as an instrument of war without congressional authorization. (4) This campaign of extrajudicial killing culminated in the January 3, 2026, seizure of Maduro himself from his residence in Caracas and his forcible transport to New York to face trial, an operation conducted entirely on the President's unilateral authority, without any congressional debate or authorization for the use of force inside sovereign Venezuelan territory. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump has claimed for himself the power to order the death of individuals, United States citizens and foreign alike, based solely on his own say-so, without charge or judicial process. Such authority to unilaterally deprive an individual of life is fundamentally incompatible with the constitutional guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article iv: abuse of power--deploying military forces against united states cities

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath by deploying National Guard troops and active-duty Marines into Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and other United States cities over the objection of their elected governors and mayors, unlawfully using the military as a domestic police force against United States citizens in service of his political agenda. This conduct includes the following: (1) In June 2025, Donald J. Trump federalized California's National Guard and deployed approximately 4,000 troops and 700 Marines into Los Angeles over the objection of Governor Gavin Newsom, in response to protests against immigration enforcement. A Federal judge ultimately ordered control of the California National Guard returned to Governor Newsom, and a Federal appellate court upheld that ruling, confirming that the deployment exceeded the President's lawful authority. (2) Donald J. Trump sought to expand these deployments to Chicago and Portland, prompting the Supreme Court, in a ruling issued during Christmas week in 2025, to deny his request to immediately deploy the National Guard to Chicago, a rebuke that the President nonetheless characterized publicly as no impediment to his broader agenda of using United States cities as what he separately described as ``training grounds'' for the military. (3) In Washington, DC, Donald J. Trump exploited the District's unique Federal status to keep approximately 2,600 National Guard troops patrolling city streets through the end of 2026, an occupation that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, totaled roughly $496,000,000 across all city deployments through December 2025 alone. (4) These deployments have had deadly consequences. Two West Virginia National Guard members deployed to Washington, DC, under Donald J. Trump's order were shot near the White House the day before Thanksgiving 2025 and one of them, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, age 20, died of her injuries. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump has used the Armed Forces of the United States as an instrument of domestic political control, in contravention of our laws and the traditions of our democracy, deploying troops into United States cities against the wishes of their elected leaders, at grave cost to taxpayers and, in at least 1 case, at the cost of a soldier's life. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article v: violation of oath--the birthright citizenship executive order

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution by issuing, on his first day in office, an Executive order purporting to strip citizenship from children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented or present on a temporary basis, in direct contravention of the plain text of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause and more than a century of settled constitutional understanding. This conduct includes the following: (1) On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump signed an Executive order declaring that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are not ``subject to the jurisdiction'' of the United States and therefore not entitled to birthright citizenship, notwithstanding that the 14th Amendment states plainly that ``[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States''. (2) Within days, Federal courts across the country in Washington, Maryland, and New Hampshire among other jurisdictions issued emergency orders blocking the directive as inconsistent with the 14th Amendment. The first court to rule on the order found it to be a blatant violation of the Constitution. The order never took effect anywhere in the United States at any point during the year and a half between its issuance and the Supreme Court's final ruling, because it was enjoined by every single court that examined it. Such an unbroken, unanimous judicial record, across multiple Federal districts and every level of the Federal judiciary up through the Supreme Court itself, demonstrates that the order was clearly unlawful from its inception. Despite this, Donald J. Trump intentionally and unconstitutionally used the executive authority of the President in an attempt to override the Constitution he swore to uphold. (3) On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court, in Trump v. Barbara, struck down the Executive order by a 6 to 3 vote, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment. Even Justice Kavanaugh, who dissented from the constitutional holding, agreed that the order violated Federal law. (4) Rather than accept this landmark defeat as confirmation that his order was unlawful from its inception, Donald J. Trump signed 2 new Executive orders on August 6, 2026, one purporting to exclude further categories of children born in the United States from automatic citizenship, and a second directing the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to deny visas and entry to individuals suspected of traveling to the United States for the purpose of giving birth each described by the Administration as protecting ``the meaning and value of American citizenship''. Asked whether the new orders would survive the constitutional scrutiny the first had not, Donald J. Trump said only, ``I think it will'', notwithstanding that the Supreme Court's decision 6 weeks earlier had already held that unilateral executive fiat cannot narrow the 14th Amendment's guarantee, and that any narrowing of that guarantee is a legislative and judicial function, not an executive one. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump attempted to rewrite by executive decree a constitutional guarantee that has defined United States citizenship since the ratification of the 14th Amendment, and pursued that effort for a year and a half after being told by every court to examine it that his order was unconstitutional, and then, within weeks of a unanimous rebuke from the Nation's highest court, attempted the same maneuver again. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article vi: abuse of power--canceling federal grants to punish states for their votes

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath, the First Amendment's protection of political rights, and the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment by directing Federal agencies to cancel billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated grants and disaster and public safety funding based solely on whether a State's electoral votes went to his 2024 opponent. In so doing, Donald J. Trump attempted to usurp Congress' spending authority and weaponize the machinery of Federal spending against United States citizens based solely on their political affiliation, the very association and expression the First Amendment exists to protect. This conduct includes the following: (1) On October 1, 2025, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced on social media that the Administration would cancel clean-energy grants in 16 States that had voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, and the Department of Energy went on to terminate 284 grants worth approximately $7,500,000,000. In sworn court filings, the Department of Energy later admitted the terminations were based ``solely on the political identity of the grant recipient's State'' and that comparable grants in States that voted for Donald J. Trump were not terminated. (2) On January 12, 2026, United States District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that this scheme violated the Fifth Amendment's equal protection guarantee, holding that the Administration's own admitted basis for the terminations the political composition of a State's congressional delegation bears no rational relationship to any legitimate governmental purpose, and that the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause forbids the executive branch from distributing congressionally appropriated funds according to a citizenry's voting behavior. (3) The Department of Homeland Security separately announced it would withhold 20 percent of Federal disaster and public safety grants, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it would withhold terrorism-prevention funding, from States that declined to hand over unredacted voter rolls to the Administration conditioning public safety funding for millions of United States citizens on States' submission to an unrelated, politically motivated demand. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump directed the corruption of the Federal grantmaking process into an instrument of political retribution against entire States and the millions of United States citizens who live in them, conditioning the receipt of Federal funds Congress appropriated for the public benefit on whether a State's electorate voted for him. Such use of public funds is so egregious and capricious that a Federal court has already found it unconstitutional, with no legitimate governmental purpose other than punishing citizens for how their neighbors voted. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article vii: abuse of power--imposing loyalty tests on the federal workforce

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath by firing Federal employees for the perception of disloyalty or for having worked on disfavored activities, including investigating or prosecuting Donald J. Trump's own prior conduct. Further, Donald J. Trump directed the reclassification of thousands of career civil servants as at-will employees subject to removal for insufficient personal loyalty, and directed Federal job applicants to answer questions demonstrating fealty to his administration's policies, undermining the nonpartisan civil service that Congress established by law to protect the government from political patronage. This conduct includes the following: (1) On January 31, 2025, at the direction of Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the Department of Justice fired approximately 40 prosecutors in the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, who had worked on cases arising from the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and demanded that the FBI supply the names of potentially thousands of agents and employees who had supported those investigations. Days later, Acting Deputy Attorney General Bove ordered more than a half-dozen senior FBI executives to retire or be fired, and Donald J. Trump publicly stated that agents who had worked on the January 6th investigations or on the criminal cases previously brought against him would be fired, asserting without evidence that they were ``corrupt'' and pledging the firings would be done ``quickly and very surgically''. Nine FBI agents sued to block release of the list, arguing that firing employees for the cases to which they had been assigned would be unlawful and retaliatory. (2) On February 7, 2025, Donald J. Trump fired Hampton Dellinger, the Senate-confirmed head of the Office of Special Counsel the independent agency charged with protecting Federal employees and whistleblowers from unlawful personnel actions, notwithstanding that Federal law permits his removal only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, none of which the Administration asserted. Around the same time, Donald J. Trump removed Cathy Harris, a Democratic member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, the body with exclusive jurisdiction over Federal employees' appeals of unlawful firings, leaving the Board without the quorum it needed to function. A Federal district court found Dellinger's removal unlawful and ordered him reinstated, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed that ruling and permitted the removal to take effect while litigation continued, disabling, in the interim, the very institutions Congress created to check the unlawful firing of Federal employees Donald J. Trump was simultaneously carrying out government-wide. (3) In the first weeks of his second term, Donald J. Trump's Department of Justice gave a group of senior career attorneys, including section chiefs from the Environment and Natural Resources Division and senior leaders of the Civil Rights and National Security Divisions, an ultimatum to resign, or accept reassignment to a newly created ``Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group'' with no litigation authority and no substantive legal work. The reassignments were executed before Attorney General Pam Bondi's confirmation specifically to avoid a Federal ethics guideline requiring a 120-day moratorium on such transfers after new agency leadership takes office. Attorneys assigned to the group were given only menial research tasks and were not permitted to communicate with the lawyers actually litigating sanctuary-city cases. Every attorney assigned to the group ultimately resigned, one former section chief describing the assignment as ``a sham'' in which ``we did very little''. (4) On June 3, 2026, Donald J. Trump signed an Executive order stripping job protections from an estimated 8,000 senior Federal employees, converting them into a new ``Schedule Policy/Career'' category of at-will workers who can be fired without cause, a revival of the ``Schedule F'' scheme first proposed in his first term, under which employees may be removed for declining to carry out the President's personal directives rather than for any deficiency in the performance of their statutory duties. (5) The Administration's own Office of Personnel Management director acknowledged in public remarks that the new category exists precisely so employees who do not carry out the President's directives can ``be removed effectively at-will''. (6) In June 2025, the Administration unveiled a new ``Merit Hiring Plan'' for Federal job applicants that included essay questions asking candidates to identify their favorite Donald J. Trump policy or Executive order, a screening criterion bearing no relationship to the merit-based qualifications the civil service laws require, and one designed instead to measure an applicant's personal fealty to the President before that applicant is ever permitted to take the oath of office, which by law runs to the Constitution alone. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump sought to convert a professional, nonpartisan civil service accountable to law into a corps of political loyalists accountable to him personally, contrary to the merit system Congress established more than a century ago precisely to prevent this form of executive abuse. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article viii: disregard of courts--the alien enemies act and the case of kilmar abrego garcia

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and defied binding orders of the Federal judiciary, including a unanimous Supreme Court order, by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport hundreds of individuals to a Salvadoran prison without due process, and by refusing for months to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man the government itself admitted was deported in error. This conduct includes the following: (1) On March 15, 2025, Donald J. Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime statute last used to justify the internment of Japanese, German, and Italian nationals during World War II, to deport 137 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, along with 101 other Venezuelans and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man with a standing immigration court order barring his removal to that country. This occurred in direct opposition to a Federal judge's clear order to halt the deportation flights and, if necessary, turn the airplanes around while still in the air. The Administration proceeded regardless. (2) The Department of Justice conceded in court filings that Abrego Garcia's deportation was the result of an ``administrative error'', yet the Administration refused for months to facilitate his return despite a district court order and a unanimous Supreme Court ruling directing it to do so. The Administration's litigating position that once a person has been removed from the United States, no court retains power to order the correction of an admittedly erroneous removal would, if accepted, permit the executive branch to place any person, including a United States citizen, beyond the reach of judicial review simply by acting before a court can intervene. (3) Evidence gathered by journalists and advocacy organizations later showed that most of the men sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act proceeding faced no specific allegations of gang membership or criminal activity, and that men held there were held entirely incommunicado, without access to lawyers or family, for months. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump used a wartime statute intended for actual foreign combatants to strip hundreds of people, including at least 1 man his own Department of Justice admitted was innocent of any wrongdoing, of due process protections guaranteed by the Constitution, and then defied the orders of the very courts charged with correcting the error. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article ix: violation of oath--cruel and unusual punishment at cecot

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by knowingly consigning hundreds of deportees, including individuals with no criminal record, to indefinite and incommunicado detention in El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, a facility notorious for abuse, and by paying the Government of El Salvador millions of dollars to hold them beyond the reach of United States courts. This conduct includes the following: (1) The United States Government paid the Government of El Salvador approximately $6,000,000 to detain deportees at CECOT, a mega-prison built specifically to hold suspected gang members under a state of emergency that has suspended ordinary due process protections within El Salvador itself. (2) Sworn court filings submitted on behalf of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's family described severe physical abuse he suffered while held at CECOT, and reporting found that men sent there were held with no access to lawyers, family members, or the outside world for months, with writs of habeas corpus filed on their behalf in Salvadoran courts going unanswered. (3) The arrangement was designed, and Administration officials acknowledged as much in litigation, specifically to place deportees beyond the jurisdiction of United States courts as an explicit strategy to evade the constitutional protections against arbitrary and indefinite detention that apply to any person within the custody or control of the United States Government, regardless of where that custody is physically located. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump knowingly subjected human beings, including people his own administration admitted were wrongfully deported, to indefinite detention without charge in a foreign prison notorious for abuse, financed with United States taxpayer dollars and designed specifically to place them beyond the protection of United States law. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article x: violation of oath--unlawful withholding of appropriated funds and dismantling of congressionally established programs

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath to take care that the laws be faithfully executed by directing Federal agencies, across dozens of programs, to withhold, delay, or refuse to spend funds that Congress had lawfully appropriated, and by unilaterally dismantling Government functions and programs that only Congress has the authority to eliminate. This conduct includes the following: (1) On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump signed an Executive order establishing the United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Service within the Executive Office of the President, an entity with no basis in any statute Congress enacted, and directed it to access the payment and data systems of, and impound funds appropriated to, agencies across the Federal Government. DOGE moved within weeks to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) entirely, freezing all of its disbursements, placing thousands of employees on leave, and attempting to fold its remaining functions into the State Department without any congressional action authorizing the agency's elimination. A Federal judge found the shutdown likely unlawful, and the Supreme Court ultimately ordered billions of dollars in frozen USAID payments released to contractors owed the money. DOGE personnel separately seized access to the internal systems of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency created by Congress, after the agency's acting director halted its funding and ordered staff to stop performing ``any work tasks'', an attempt to shutter by administrative fiat an agency that only Congress has the power to eliminate. DOGE undertook similar actions against the United States African Development Foundation and the Inter-American Foundation, both created by Congress, cancelling grants and contracts and reducing the former agency's staff to a single employee. (2) The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office repeatedly found the Administration in violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 across multiple agencies and programs, including a May 2025 finding that the Department of Transportation illegally delayed spending on electric-vehicle charging infrastructure required by law, and a July 2025 finding that the Department of Energy illegally withheld funding for the Renew America's Schools Program benefiting Kindergarten through 12th grade schools nationwide. (3) The Government Accountability Office similarly found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency violated the Impoundment Control Act by improperly withholding or delaying congressionally appropriated disaster-preparedness funding funds Congress had already determined should reach United States communities preparing for the next emergency, withheld instead based on the Administration's disagreement with Congress' spending priorities rather than any statutory basis for delay. (4) Independent budget analysis found that by July 2025, the Administration had significantly delayed spending across 24 Federal accounts well beyond the specific programs it had formally proposed for rescission, concentrated precisely in the programs the Administration had separately targeted for elimination evidence of a deliberate strategy to starve disfavored programs of funds Congress had already appropriated rather than seeking Congress' approval to cut them. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump substituted his own budgetary preferences for the considered judgment of Congress, denying United States citizens services and protections that their elected representatives had funded through the constitutionally prescribed appropriations process, and did so repeatedly even after nonpartisan investigators found the practice unlawful. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article xi: abuse of power--obstructing the lawful appointment of united states attorneys

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and the separation of powers by engineering a series of maneuvers to install his personal loyalists as United States Attorneys in defiance of the appointments clause and the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, after Federal judges exercised their statutory authority to decline extending those loyalists' interim terms. This conduct includes the following: (1) In New Jersey, after Federal judges declined to extend interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba's (Habba) term and instead selected career prosecutor Desiree Leigh Grace, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Grace within hours, and the Administration executed a multi-step maneuver withdrawing Habba's Senate nomination, having her resign, and then reappointing her as a ``Special Attorney'', specifically designed to evade the judges' decision and the Senate confirmation process altogether. (2) On December 1, 2025, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a ruling disqualifying Habba, finding that the Administration's maneuver was ``plainly prohibited'' by Federal law and would, if permitted, allow any Special Attorney to ``avoid the gauntlet of presidential appointment and Senate confirmation and serve as the de facto U.S. Attorney indefinitely''. The court observed that the Administration's approach effectively would ``permit anyone to fill the U.S. Attorney role indefinitely''. (3) The same unlawful appointment mechanism was used in the Eastern District of Virginia to install Lindsey Halligan, a former Donald J. Trump personal lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, as interim United States Attorney after the sitting United States Attorney resigned under pressure for questioning the sufficiency of the evidence against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. A Federal judge subsequently dismissed the indictments Halligan had obtained, ruling that she ``had no lawful authority to present the indictment''. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump repeatedly circumvented the constitutional and statutory processes governing the appointment of United States Attorneys in order to install personally loyal prosecutors, including his own former personal lawyers, in positions of prosecutorial power over his political adversaries, defying Federal courts each time they intervened to enforce the law. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article xii: abuse of power--defying court orders in immigration enforcement

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath by directing Federal officials to disregard binding orders of Federal courts in the conduct of immigration enforcement. Under Article III of the Constitution, the judiciary alone possesses the power to say what the law is in a case or controversy properly before it, and a Federal court's judgment, once entered, is final and binding on the parties, including the executive branch, unless and until it is reversed on appeal by a higher court. The executive branch possesses no constitutional authority to disregard, evade, or outrun a Federal court's order because compliance is inconvenient or because the government disagrees with the court's reasoning. This conduct includes the following: (1) On March 15, 2025, even after United States District Judge James Boasberg orally ordered that deportation flights bound for El Salvador be turned around while still in the air, the Administration allowed the flights to proceed and complete the deportations, and the Department of Justice appealed the underlying order the same day rather than complying with it. On April 16, 2025, in a 46 page order, Judge Boasberg found probable cause to hold the Government in criminal contempt, writing that ``the Government's actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt'', and adding that he did not reach that conclusion ``lightly or hastily'', having given the Government ``ample opportunity to rectify or explain its actions'', none of which had been ``satisfactory''. Judge Boasberg, an appointee of President Obama, who had earlier been nominated to the local DC courts by President George W. Bush, wrote directly to the constitutional stakes of the Government's conduct: ``The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders, especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it''. (2) In the related case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, United States District Judge Paula Xinis found that the Administration's response to her discovery orders filed after the Supreme Court had unanimously directed the Government to facilitate his return, ``reflects a deliberate evasion of their fundamental discovery obligations'', and that the Government's failure to respond ``can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance'', citing a ``willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations''. Judge Xinis further found that the Administration had engaged in a ``continued mischaracterization of the Supreme Court's Order'' by claiming, contrary to the Order's plain terms, that it had not been directed to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from Salvadoran custody. (3) When the Administration sought emergency appellate relief from Judge Xinis' orders, a unanimous 3 judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, including a Reagan appointee writing for a panel that also included appointees of Presidents Clinton and Obama, rejected the Government's position in terms rarely used by a Federal appellate court about the conduct of the executive branch. The panel wrote that the Government was ``asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order'', and that its position, that having rid itself of custody there was nothing further it could do, ``should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear''. (4) The pattern across these cases proceeding with deportations while a court's order to halt them was still pending, and asserting that removal from the country moots any judicial power to order return, reflects a considered litigating strategy, repeated across multiple cases and multiple courts, of treating compliance with judicial orders as optional whenever speed can place the Government's action beyond the court's practical ability to undo it. That this strategy has drawn findings of willful disregard, bad faith, and deliberate evasion from Federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties, and a rebuke from a unanimous, ideologically mixed appellate panel, confirms that this is not a case of good-faith legal disagreement about the scope of a court's authority, but a deliberate course of conduct in defiance of it. (5) The Administration's posture in these cases asserting that once a person has been removed from the United States, courts lack power to order their return regardless of the legality of the removal, would, if accepted, permit the executive branch to place any person, including an United States citizen, beyond the reach of judicial review simply by acting quickly enough. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump has treated the orders of Article III as optional constraints to be evaded through speed and procedural gamesmanship rather than as binding law, conduct that Federal judges appointed by Presidents of both parties have found, in their own binding rulings, to be willful, made in bad faith, and undertaken with deliberate intent to evade compliance. This is not a case in which the House of Representatives must characterize the Administration's conduct as defiance, the courts vested with the constitutional authority to make that determination have already made it, repeatedly, and the Administration's response has been to continue the conduct those courts condemned. It strikes at the fundamental premise of a government of separated powers in which no branch, including the executive, is the final judge of its own authority. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article xiii: abolishing a congressionally mandated agency--the department of education

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath by directing the Secretary of Education to dismantle the Department of Education, an agency created by Congress in 1979, notwithstanding that only Congress possesses the authority to abolish a Federal department it has established by statute. This conduct includes the following: (1) On March 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump signed an Executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to ``take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education'', stating at the signing ceremony that he hoped she would be ``our last Secretary of Education'' and that his administration would ``take all lawful steps to shut down the Department''. (2) The Department of Education was created by Congress through the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979, a statute duly enacted through bicameralism and presentment, as a matter of basic constitutional structure, an agency created by an Act of Congress can be abolished only by another Act of Congress, since the President's unilateral authority extends to the execution of the laws, not their repeal. No such repealing legislation was ever enacted. The Senate never took up, let alone passed, legislation abolishing the Department. (3) Notwithstanding this settled constitutional limitation, the Administration proceeded to redistribute the Department's core functions, including Federal student loan administration and special-education services, to other agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, effectively achieving through Executive fiat much of what Congress alone is empowered to accomplish through legislation. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump sought to eliminate, by his own hand, a cabinet department that Congress created and that only Congress can lawfully abolish, substituting unilateral executive action for the legislative process the Constitution requires for the elimination of institutions Congress has established. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article xiv: violation of oath--unlawful mass termination of inspectors general without statutory notice to congress

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, by summarily firing at least 17 Senate-confirmed Inspectors General across the Federal Government on his fifth day in office, without the 30 days advance notice to Congress or the case-specific reasons for removal that Federal law requires, disabling, before his administration had completed its second week, the independent watchdogs Congress created specifically to detect waste, fraud, and abuse within the very agencies Donald J. Trump now controls. This conduct includes the following: (1) On the night of January 24, 2025, the White House Presidential Personnel Office notified at least 17, and by some counts 18, Inspectors General across major cabinet departments and agencies including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, State, and Veterans Affairs, that they were terminated effective immediately. The Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended by the Securing Inspector General Independence Act of 2022, requires the President to communicate to Congress, in writing, 30 days before removing or transferring an Inspector General, a substantive rationale including detailed, case-specific reasons for the removal. No such notice was given to Congress, and no case-specific reason was given to any of the Inspectors General removed. (2) Hannibal ``Mike'' Ware, the Inspector General for the Small Business Administration and chairperson of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, wrote to the White House that same night warning that the removals appeared unlawful because the required notice period had been ignored, and recommending that the White House consult its own counsel before proceeding. The removals proceeded regardless. (3) On January 28, 2025, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Committee's Democratic ranking member, jointly wrote to Donald J. Trump demanding the legally required explanation for the firings, stating that ``the communication to Congress must contain more than just broad and vague statements'' and must ``assure Congress and the public that the termination is due to real concerns about the Inspector General's ability to carry out their mission''. No adequate response was ever provided. This bipartisan demand issued by the chairman and ranking member of the committee with direct jurisdiction over the firings, within days of the terminations, stands as a contemporaneous, formal record that both parties in Congress recognized the firings as a violation of law at the time they occurred, not merely in retrospect. (4) Eight of the fired Inspectors General sued in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. On September 24, 2025, United States District Judge Ana C. Reyes ruled that the firings violated the Inspector General Act's notice requirement and were therefore unlawful, though she declined to order the Inspectors General reinstated, reasoning that Donald J. Trump retained the underlying power to remove them and would likely simply fire them again after belatedly providing the legally required notice a ruling that confirmed the illegality of Donald J. Trump's conduct while illustrating the practical difficulty of enforcing Congress' oversight prerogatives against a President determined to evade them. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump gutted, in a single night and without any of the process Congress required, the independent oversight apparatus that exists specifically to detect and report waste, fraud, and abuse within the agencies of the executive branch, disabling, at the very outset of his term, the mechanism by which Congress and the public would otherwise have been positioned to learn of the misconduct catalogued throughout the other articles of this resolution, and doing so over the contemporaneous, bipartisan objection of the chairman and ranking member of the Senate committee charged with overseeing exactly this conduct. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article xv: unlawfully and unilaterally taxing united states citizens through emergency powers tariffs

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath and Article I of the Constitution, which vests the power to lay and collect taxes and duties exclusively in Congress, by imposing sweeping tariffs on nearly all goods imported into the United States under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act which does not authorize the President to impose tariffs at all. This conduct includes the following: (1) Beginning February 1, 2025, Donald J. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, and on April 2, 2025, a day the Administration itself dubbed ``Liberation Day'', declared a further emergency to impose sweeping reciprocal tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world, notwithstanding that in nearly 50 years, no president had ever invoked that statute to impose a tariff. (2) On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court, in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, ruled 6 to 3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose tariffs at all. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts explained that accepting Donald J. Trump's interpretation would ``give the President power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs'', unconstrained by any of the procedural limits Congress built into the Nation's actual tariff statutes. (3) Independent economists estimated that the invalidated tariffs had already extracted between $175,000,000,000 and $179,000,000,000 from United States businesses and consumers a sum exceeding the combined annual budgets of the Department of Transportation and the Department of Justice, collected without a single vote of the Congress in which the Constitution vests the taxing power. (4) Rather than accept the Supreme Court's ruling as a rebuke, Donald J. Trump, within hours of the decision, proclaimed a new 10 percent global tariff under a different statute and announced his intention to raise it further within days, demonstrating that his tariff program was never a response to a genuine emergency but a standing assertion of a taxing power the Constitution does not give him. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump imposed what amounted to a nationwide tax increase on United States citizens without the consent of their elected representatives in Congress, using an emergency statute that the Nation's highest court unanimously agreed does not authorize taxation, and persisted in asserting that same taxing power through new statutory pretexts immediately after being told by the Supreme Court that he did not have it. Wherefore, Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

article xvi: abuse of power--political prosecutions of comey, james, and schiff

Donald J. Trump violated his constitutional oath by directing the Department of Justice to pursue criminal prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey (Comey), New York Attorney General Letitia James (James), and Senator Adam Schiff (Schiff), 3 of his most prominent political adversaries, in a manner so factually dubious that a grand jury itself refused to approve the full indictment presented against Comey, forcing the prosecutor to circumvent that refusal rather than accept it, and so legally deficient and procedurally irregular that the resulting indictments were dismissed by the courts. This conduct includes the following: (1) On September 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump posted publicly demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute Comey, James, and Schiff by name. Days later, Erik Siebert, the sitting interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned under pressure after concluding the evidence against Comey and James was insufficient to charge. The Administration then installed Lindsey Halligan, a former Donald J. Trump personal lawyer, who obtained the indictments Siebert had declined to seek. (2) On September 25, 2025, the grand jury considering the case against Comey rejected 1 of the 3 counts Halligan had presented. Rather than present a revised indictment to the full grand jury for its vote, Halligan simply reprinted an altered, 2 count version of the document and brought it to the grand jury foreperson alone to sign, without the remaining grand jurors ever reviewing or voting on the indictment in the form that was actually filed. Prosecutors confirmed this sequence of events in open court 2 months later, prompting Comey's attorneys to move to dismiss the indictment on the ground that no valid grand jury had ever approved it. (3) A Federal judge dismissed the indictments against both Comey and James after finding that Halligan's own appointment as interim United States Attorney was unlawful, and further criticized the prosecution for what the court called a ``disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps''. (4) In the parallel investigation of Senator Schiff, prosecutors in the Maryland United States Attorney's Office after months of investigation prompted by Donald J. Trump's public demands, concluded they lacked sufficient evidence to bring charges, and the Justice Department's own Inspector General subsequently opened an investigation into whether individuals had impersonated Federal agents while pursuing the mortgage-fraud theory the Administration had promoted against Schiff. (5) All 3 individuals targeted by name in Donald J. Trump's public demand for prosecution, Comey, James, and Schiff, were prominent critics of Donald J. Trump who had each played a central role in investigating him or holding him accountable during his first term, with Comey as FBI Director during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, James as the New York Attorney General who obtained a civil fraud judgment against the Trump Organization, and Schiff as the lead House manager in Donald J. Trump's first impeachment trial. The selection of these 3 specific individuals for prosecution, following Donald J. Trump's own public identification of them by name, evidences a prosecutorial decision driven by personal and political enmity rather than by the independent judgment of career law enforcement, which in each instance had itself concluded that prosecution was not warranted. Through this conduct, Donald J. Trump directed the machinery of Federal law enforcement against named political adversaries by public demand, installed unlawfully appointed prosecutors to pursue cases his own department's career attorneys had declined, tolerated a prosecutor's circumvention of a grand jury's own refusal to approve the charges as presented, and pursu

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