Hegseth condemns impeachment effort against him, as House members push for vote

As U.S. House members pushed for a potential vote Wednesday on whether to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his handling of the Iran war and other alleged “high crimes” against the nation, Hegseth prepared for a fight — with President Donald Trump squarely behind him.

“In the 250 years of our American republic, no secretary of war or secretary of defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations,” Hegseth told reporters during his first press briefing at the Pentagon in six months. He denounced the proceedings as a “political spectacle” brought by a rogue Republican lawmaker over mere “policy disagreements.”

“Pete Hegseth gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” Trump wrote on social media Tuesday — in reference to the outgoing Kentucky Republican who brought the articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday.

Massie — in his last months in office after losing his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in May — has been a thorn in the administration’s side for some time, including as a sponsor of legislation that forced the Justice Department to release millions of pages of records related to the late disgraced financier and sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

Massie spearheaded that effort, and another war powers resolution aimed at reining in the Iran conflict, alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, — who this week joined other Democrats in rallying behind the Hegseth impeachment, in part by citing Democrats’ sweeping wins in last week’s midterm elections.

“Now the voters have spoken. They want us to end this war. That begins with impeaching Pete Hegseth and convicting him in the Senate,” Khanna said in a video posted Monday.

Massie’s resolution largely focuses on the war in Iran, arguing that Hegseth launched it without necessary congressional authorization, among other things. It also accuses Hegseth of violating the law in military actions against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, in the U.S. capture of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in that country in January, and in missile strikes on alleged drug boats in international waters around the U.S.

A simple majority vote is needed in the House to impeach, and the votes may well be there despite Republicans being in control. However, whether that will mean the articles move to the Senate, or that a Senate trial will occur, is unclear — with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., refusing to say Tuesday whether he would send approved articles of impeachment to the Senate, or withhold them for the next, Democrat-controlled Congress to handle next year.

Massie said Tuesday that he had “heard from several members they agree with some of the Articles of Impeachment but not all of them,” and that if a motion to kill his resolution by referring it to committee failed, and the House proceeded with a vote on the articles themselves, he would “request a vote on each of the Articles separately.”

Democrats are expected to vote overwhelmingly in favor of impeachment, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., recently saying he is a “hard yes.” On Tuesday, California Democrats began lining up behind the effort.

Rep. Dave Min, D-Irvine, who co-sponsored a previous attempt to impeach Hegseth, said Hegseth should not only be impeached but “should be facing criminal investigations, potentially for murder” — and that he believes most of his Democratic colleagues will join him in voting for impeachment.

Min said that throughout the Democratic caucus and among some Republicans, there is “not just frustration but an outrage that Hegseth is so cavalierly breaking the law, so cavalierly putting troops in harm’s way, and so cavalierly ignoring or throwing contempt on our attempts to exert oversight over” the Department of Defense.

Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, said Hegseth deserves to be impeached for sending the nation into a war that was never approved by Congress and that the House repeatedly voted to end, for breaking the law by ordering the killing of two men who survived a U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, and for refusing to provide answers about a U.S. missile strike on a girls’ elementary school in Iran.

Massie’s impeachment articles “are grounded in the law, well documented, and written by a Republican who put his oath ahead of his party,” Levin wrote on X, while calling on Johnson not to obstruct the effort.

Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-San Diego, wrote that Hegseth’s “rap sheet includes the illegal Iran war, illegal strikes in Yemen (where he mishandled classified information via Signal), and over 200 murders in boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. He’s dangerous and needs to go.”

The Republican-controlled Senate could still avoid a trial even if the House voted to impeach Hegseth. But if one were to occur, a two-thirds majority would need to vote to convict Hegseth for him to be removed. Two Cabinet members have been impeached in U.S. history; none has been convicted.

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, and convicting Hegseth would be an uphill battle. However, some majority senators have indicated openness to a trial — including outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who has said Hegseth has shown “incredible misjudgment” on Iran and that he would listen to any testimony presented at a Senate trial; and outgoing Sen. Joni Ernst, D-Iowa.

California’s Democratic senators — Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff — have long called for Hegseth’s removal.

The impeachment effort reflects an early potential reckoning over the unpopular Iran war after a blistering midterms in which voters moved sharply toward Democrats — delivering the party control of both the House and Senate next year. Much of that swing has been attributed to the Iran war and the related surge in gas prices and other costs.

Vice President JD Vance blamed the midterm losses entirely on the Iran war, and Hegseth has repeatedly been questioned about those remarks as he has tried to defend the war as necessary and his leadership of the military as responsible.

On Tuesday, Vance put his own weight behind Hegseth, too, calling the question of whether Hegseth has committed impeachable crimes “absurd,” and said the answer is “obviously not.”

“Like so much of Congress, impeachment has become a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policymaking. Congress has so many tools for registering its policy disagreements. Rather than use them, they’re going to try to impeach Pete Hegseth. They did the same to Donald Trump,” Vance said in a social media post — a reference to Trump being impeached twice during his first term in office.

Hegseth — who calls himself the “secretary of war” despite no move by Congress to change the name of the Defense Department he oversees — has driven a radical reshaping of top brass within the Pentagon and of Pentagon policy — inspired largely by his fierce opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, transgender troops and others he deems insufficiently masculine, aggressive or ideologically loyal to the president.

“We are no longer the Woke Department or the Weak Department,” he said in a September speech. “Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals. Just warriors.”

Such language — including the slur for transgender people — and Hegseth’s related reshaping of leadership have been denounced by Democrats and former military leaders as beneath the leader of the U.S. military and unfair to women, LGBTQ+ people and people of color.

Pentagon officials have attempted to show a unified front against impeachment and in support of Hegseth, with many posting an image of Hegseth emblazoned with the words, “Stand. Fight. Defend the Republic.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also defended Hegseth, asserting that all of the actions he has been challenged on were at Trump’s direction.

“Not only did Pete execute on a direct order from the Commander-in-Chief who, in our Constitution, is empowered and trusted with the job of keeping Americans safe, but they did it quite effectively on all those fronts,” Rubio said.

Min rejected that argument. “‘I was just following orders, sir,’ is never a defense when you’re breaking the law,” he said.