What specific statute was cited in the third article of impeachment against Donald Trump?

1. Which document contains the “third article” being asked about — and what it says

The phrasing “third article of impeachment” corresponds, in Rep. Shri Thanedar’s H.Res.353, to “ARTICLE III: ABUSE OF TRADE POWERS AND INTERNATIONAL AGGRESSION.” The congressional text (as posted on Congress.gov and preprints like GovTrack) explicitly labels Article III with that title and then grounds its arguments in the Constitution’s allocation of powers to Congress ^{[1] [2]}.

2. How the article frames the statutory or constitutional basis

H.Res.353’s Article III invokes the Constitution — particularly Section 8 of Article I, which assigns Congress powers over taxes, commerce and related foreign-affairs authorities — to argue that the President exceeded or usurped trade and international authorities (the resolution text ties the allegation to Section 8 authorities) ^{[1] [2]}. The cited materials show the House resolution uses constitutional powers as its legal frame rather than pointing to a single criminal statute ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Distinction between constitutional claims and statutory crimes

House impeachment articles historically often rest on constitutional breaches or “high crimes and misdemeanors” rather than charging specific criminal statutes; Newsweek noted that impeachment does not require a statutory crime and that Members may ground impeachment on misdeeds that are not codified as criminal offenses ^[3]. The H.Res.353 text follows that pattern by alleging abuse of constitutional trade and foreign-affairs powers ^{[1] [2]}.

4. Other impeachment resolutions introduced and how they differ

Separately, Rep. Al Green filed H.Res.415 and a later draft H.Res._ that contain their own lists of articles — for instance, H.Res.415 emphasizes “Devolving democracy into authoritarianism” and attacks on the judiciary, and its articles are structured differently from Thanedar’s trade-focused Article III ^{[4] [5]}. Congressional reporting and compilations of introduced resolutions in 2025 show multiple, distinct impeachment efforts with differing Article III topics depending on the resolution and sponsor ^{[6] [7]}.

5. Who is asserting the case and what their intent appears to be

The primary source for the “Abuse of Trade Powers and International Aggression” article is Rep. Shri Thanedar’s resolution (H.Res.353), which he introduced with co-sponsors and described as charging a range of constitutional violations, including impoundment of funds, violations of privacy and termination of employees, and trade actions ^{[1] [2]}. Thanedar’s office characterized its package as seven articles alleging sweeping abuse of power ^[8]. Rep. Al Green’s separate filings present overlapping political aims — to force debate and to document alleged misconduct — but they focus on different misconduct categories ^{[5] [9]}.

6. Competing perspectives and limits of the public record

Supporters of these resolutions present constitutional arguments tying presidential actions to Article I powers and to “high crimes and misdemeanors” ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Opponents and commentators not included in the supplied materials likely dispute the factual premises or political prudence of pursuing impeachment given House partisan math; available sources do not mention specific Republican responses or votes on these precise articles in the provided documents (not found in current reporting). The supplied materials do not show a single criminal statute cited as the basis for Article III; instead the text cites constitutional allocations and alleged usurpations ^{[1] [2]}.

7. What this means going forward

If the House were to advance any article to a vote, the constitutional framing in H.Res.353’s Article III would require the Judiciary Committee and the full House to translate constitutional allegations about trade and foreign-affairs authority into impeachable offenses — a political and legal judgment, not a straightforward statutory prosecution ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Readers should note the difference between alleging a constitutional usurpation (what the text does) and alleging violation of a named criminal statute — the articles cited rely on constitutional power allocations as their legal scaffolding ^{[1] [2]}.