President Donald Trump fears a third impeachment if Democrats take back control of the House this fall, but an analyst urged them to focus instead on a weak link in his chain of command.
The 80-year-old president commits potentially impeachable offenses on a near-daily basis in his second term, MS NOW's Hayes Brown wrote. But he suggested his opponents flex their political muscle first by taking down Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect who has been two-timing Congress by making spending cuts rejected by lawmakers as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
"With the possible exception of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Vought arguably has the firmest grip on the levers of power in Washington," Brown wrote. "While Trump’s focus is trained on a handful of obsessions, Vought has the knowledge and skill set to turn his Christian nationalist ideology into policy — and transform those policies into reality."
The conservative hardliner has pushed for draconian cuts to federal spending for years in policy papers circulated by right-wing think tanks, but Trump has given him free rein to enact his vision in ways that Brown argued almost certainly violate the Constitution.
"Constitutionally, it’s Congress that controls the power of the purse," Brown wrote. "The president is required to submit a budget request to lawmakers each year, but he and all the executive departments and agencies under him rely on congressional appropriations to fund their activities. While Republicans control both the House and Senate, lawmakers yet again rejected the suggested cuts in Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget in favor of their own preferred spending levels."
Vought insists the president is allowed to "impound" funds that he doesn't want spent – despite a 1974 law limiting those powers and Supreme Court precedents saying otherwise – and he has used his office's "apportionment" authority to hold up millions of dollars in spending that Congress has approved.
"In withholding those funds, Vought and Trump have violated not just the Impoundment Control Act, which has no legal penalties, but also the Anti-Deficiency Act, which does," Brown wrote.
Legal experts say that Vought could be referred to the Justice Department for violating that law, but Brown said impeachment would be a much more political expedient remedy.
"It is well within the legislative branch’s ability to bring articles of impeachment against Vought as, unlike Miller, he holds a Senate-confirmed position and clearly counts as among the 'civil Officers of the United States' who shall be removed from office for 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors,'" Brown wrote. "The Government Accountability Office has already found multiple instances where OMB has clearly violated the law. But impeachment is a political process, one where the same standard doesn’t apply as in the courts."
Brown conceded that Democrats would not likely find a two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to remove Vought from office, even if they take back control of that chamber, but he argued that impeachment was still a political fight worth taking on.
"It is precisely because Vought is not Trump that a winning case can more easily be made against him," he wrote. "While the president has a power base of his own among lawmakers to protect him, Vought has repeatedly shown nothing but contempt for Congress’ role in governing ... Even the most zealot deficit hawks would be forced to defend giving away their own power to someone that has never received a single vote in their life."