2. Abusing his power to seek retribution against perceived adversaries

Trump, via his close subordinates and agents, has abused the power of his office to seek retribution against perceived adversaries, including hundreds of nonpartisan career public servants within the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation who were merely carrying out their duties. FBI agents, DOJ attorneys, and all federal employees are expected to carry out their duties impartially, regardless of the wealth, power, or status of the individuals they prosecute, and they are now being persecuted for diligently doing their jobs.

• Unlawfully firing federal law enforcement and attorneys involved in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump and the prosecution of Trump for violations of federal law; 

• Unlawfully firing federal law enforcement and attorneys involved in investigating and prosecuting Trump’s January 6 co-insurrectionists;

• Unlawfully investigating attorneys who were involved in the prosecution of Eric Adams;

• Persecuting retired General Mark A. Milley, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2019 to 2023 under both Trump and Biden, including by revoking his security clearance and security detail and ordering the Department of Defense to investigate him; 

• Stripping former public officials of security details despite these individuals facing credible foreign or domestic threats, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and other former officials who served in Trump’s own administration.

The persecution of these officials undermines the independence of the DOJ, the FBI, and other federal agencies, and the agencies’ ability to protect the American people from abuse, corruption, and crimes committed by people with power or influence.

3. Co-opting and Dismantling Independent Government Oversight

Trump has abused his power to fire officials from key government positions and curtailed federal agencies’ ability to carry out their missions. His act will prevent independent government oversight of his own businesses and those of his benefactors, including billionaire Elon Musk, who with Trump’s encouragement and complicity gave $260 million in contributions to his own super PACs to support Trump’s 2024 campaign; promoted a massive disinformation campaign on X, a/k/a Twitter, which Musk owns; and engaged in an unlawful million-dollar lottery scheme to bribe voters to vote for Trump. Trump has:

• Ordered the unlawful termination of more than 17 duly appointed inspectors general of U.S. agencies, who served as nonpartisan public servants charged with preventing government waste, fraud, and abuse. Many were terminated after or while their agencies carried out investigations into Musk-owned companies. 

• Ordered the Department of Justice from investigating any violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. corporations and individuals from bribing foreign government officials to obtain a business advantage. The stop order will allow businesses controlled by Trump, his family, and his allies to bribe foreign governments without oversight or consequence. 

• Appointed Musk—whose businesses have 100 contracts worth $15.4 billion across 17 federal agencies—to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Though Congress did not create DOGE or confirm Musk to any official office, DOGE has authorized or advised the termination of thousands of federal employees, frozen trillions of dollars in federal grant funds, limited agency activities, and unlawfully accessed private data held by federal agencies, including private taxpayer information. 

• Fired the National Labor Relation Board’s (NLRB) General Counsel and one Democratic NLRB Board Member, leaving the NLRB without quorum or authority to adjudicate cases. The NLRB was pursuing 24 investigations into Musk-owned companies and had filed a case against Musk’s SpaceX.

• Ceased operations of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP), which enforces equal employment laws for federal contractors and was investigating Musk-owned Tesla. 

• Fired two Democratic, Senate-confirmed commissioners of the bipartisan Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), leaving it without quorum. It is charged with protecting employees from unlawful and discriminatory hiring practices; it sued Tesla for racial harassment and retaliation in 2023—a lawsuit the DOJ has now moved to dismiss. 

• Suspended all investigative work and other critical operations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), fired employees, and gave DOGE access to its sensitive data. It is tasked with protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive practices from banks and other financial service providers. Had it not been shuttered, it would have regulated Musk-controlled X’s planned mobile payments services, and continued to supervise the auto lending industry, including Tesla. 

• Laid off or bought out between 4 and 10% of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration employees, including 3 of the 7 experts in an office that oversees the safety of autonomous vehicles; it has 3 active investigations into Tesla. 

4. Unconstitutionally usurping Congress’s powers

Trump has usurped or attempted to usurp authority and powers granted to Congress by the Constitution in several significant ways. He has:

• Created a position of authority in and over federal agencies and installed Musk in that position, in violation of the Advice and Consent Clause of the U.S. Constitution. 

• Defied both Congress and the Judiciary by blocking the distribution of trillions of dollars in funds that have been appropriated by Congress under Congress’s exclusive constitutional authority, under the Taxing Clause and the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Const. art. 1, sec. 8, cl. 1 and art. 1, sec. 9, cl. 7.

5. Receiving foreign and domestic emoluments

The Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution prohibits the president from profiting from the United States, individual states, or foreign governments (U.S. Constitution, art. I, sec. 9, cl. 8; and art. II, sec. 1, cl. 7). The Founders understood these clauses to provide a critical safeguard against corruption. Trump has refused his ownership stake in his companies, including real estate holdings and golf resorts; the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social; and World Liberty Financial. He already has or is assured to receive substantial payment and benefit from foreign governments, from the United States, and from the several states; and he has enabled Musk to do the same.

6. Depriving citizens of their birthright citizenship

Birthright citizenship has been enshrined in our Constitution for more than 150 years, unequivocally and without exception conferring citizenship on “All persons born or naturalized in the United States.” In lawless defiance of the Constitution, Trump issued an executive order purporting to strip U.S.-born citizens of their citizenship because of their parents’ immigration status. The order has been stayed, but it does not absolve Trump of his abuse of power or Congress of its responsibility to hold Trump accountable for his dangerous and unlawful attack on U.S. citizens’ basic right to their own nationality.

7. Corruptly dismissing criminal charges against Eric Adams

Trump has entered into a corrupt quid pro quo agreement with New York City Mayor Eric Adams by arranging for the DOJ to dismiss a criminal case against Adams in return for Adams using city resources to enforce Trump’s federal immigration agenda. Through Assistant Attorney General Emil Bove, he also retaliated against the U.S. attorney who resigned rather than file the improper dismissal by subjecting her to investigation and placing her former colleagues on leave pending investigation.

8. Abusing the pardon power

Trump has abused the pardon power and undermined due process of law. 

• Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 co-insurrectionists, commuted the sentences of 14 additional co-insurrectionists, and ordered the Department of Justice to drop cases against all remaining January 6 defendants. He has absolved even those 400 insurrectionists who were charged with committing violent crimes against law enforcement. After inciting the insurrection, Trump has now blocked our country’s efforts to hold his fellow insurrectionists accountable and in so doing further protects himself from investigation and repercussions of his own role in the insurrection. 

• Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters, signaling that he will undermine any and all lawful efforts to hold anti-choice protesters accountable for violent assaults on doctors, medical professionals, patients, and medical clinics that provide reproductive health care; and undermine states’ rights to protect reproductive health care, the medical professionals who provide it, and the individuals who need it.
  

9. Abusing the emergency power

The President’s power to declare an emergency affords Trump access to powers and authority not normally afforded to the President. He has abused this power by falsely declaring national emergencies in order to bypass the rule of law, further his own agenda, and confer privileges on favored business sectors. He has:

• Declared a national emergency to justify deployment of troops at the U.S. border. In this declaration, Trump targets undocumented immigrants, dangerously and falsely calling efforts by vulnerable people to seek sanctuary in our country an “invasion” tantamount to an “attack” on “America’s sovereignty.” Immigration is neither, and there is no basis for either a national emergency or troop deployment within our borders. 

• Improperly declared a national energy emergency to protect and benefit fossil fuel companies and to block the renewable energy sector.

10. Blocking efforts to secure U.S. elections

The United States is facing unprecedented threats of foreign and domestic interference in U.S. elections, from entities that have the resources, tools, and capacity to hack our election systems and the emails of high-level officials, and to spread disinformation and propaganda via social media platforms. National intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia carried out a multifaceted assault on the 2016 election to benefit Trump, and that Russia, Iran, and China continue to attempt to interfere in US elections via hacking and widespread propaganda and misinformation campaigns. And pro-Trump operatives and election officials associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election have unlawfully breached voting systems and obtained copies of voting machine software, which they have widely shared and which can be exploited to undermine our election systems. Despite these known risks, Trump has directly or through his close allies:

• Ordered the apolitical Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to halt all election security work and fired 130 CISA cybersecurity professionals; and 

• Disbanded the FBI taskforce assigned to investigate unlawful foreign influence in U.S. elections;

• Ordered the DOJ to investigate the state criminal conviction of Tina Peters, a Trump ally who gave a man unlawful access to voting equipment in May 2021, enabling the equipment’s passwords and copies of its hard drive to be posted online.

11. Unconstitutionally usurping local and state authority

Trump has attempted to unconstitutionally commandeer local and state authority to carry out his mass deportation plans by threatening state and local officials with criminal prosecution if they decline to be co-opted by federal immigration authorities. In a blatant disregard to the power reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment, Trump via his then-Acting Deputy Attorney General issued a memorandum asserting the authority to require state and local actors to comply with the Executive Branch’s anti-immigration enforcement commands, and the authority to prosecute state and local officials who do not do the federal government’s bidding. The threat of even a baseless, unlawful prosecution may chill state and local officials and undermine their ability to determine how best to service their communities.

12. Engaging in unlawful, corrupt practices during the 2024 presidential campaign

Trump must be investigated for unlawful, unconstitutional, or corrupt practices that occurred during his 2024 re-election campaign, which include:

• Violating campaign finance laws by (1) offering tax and regulatory favors to oil and gas executives if they provide $1 billion in contributions; (2) concealing legal services payments by his campaign and related super PACs; (3) unlawfully coordinating with super PACs that supported his candidacy, including those financed by billionaires he later appointed to key administrative positions; and (4) facilitating and accepting unlawful campaign contributions from Musk, particularly via Musk’s million-dollar “lottery” scheme that paid out prizes only to individuals who would publicly support Trump

• Using racist, xenophobic rhetoric that endangered the safety of marginalized communities

• Threatening physical violence against political opponents, a U.S. military commander, journalists, and protesters

• Spreading dangerous disinformation about U.S. hurricane disaster response that undermine the safety of natural disaster survivors and emergency response service providers.