Republican Representative Thomas Massie is set to introduce a measure to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as soon as Monday, roughly one week after the unpopular Iran war he championed ended up fueling a midterm defeat for President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.Thomas Massie is set to introduce a measure to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Bloomberg)Massie posted the resolution outlining charges against Hegseth on social media ahead of the congressman’s plan to reintroduce articles of impeachment, sometime after the House of Representatives open on Monday at 12 p.m. The move will set up a floor vote on the motion as soon as Wednesday.“I’ve seen some of my colleagues say @SecWar Hegseth has been effective and they agree with the war, so they’ll vote not to impeach,” Massie wrote in a social media post on Monday morning. “That’s not the question though.
The question is whether he committed impeachable acts, and the answer is yes, eight times.”Also read | White House goes into temporary lockdown after vehicle crashes near North LawnMassie, who is retiring at the end of the year, is accusing Hegseth of impeachable acts including waging the Iran war without congressional authorization, committing extrajudicial killings through strikes on alleged drug boats, ignoring laws designed to minimize civilian casualties including in a strike on an Iranian school, and unlawfully kidnapping a foreign leader — Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.Asked about the efforts to remove him on Monday, Hegseth told reporters that “there’s a lot of politically motivated people who may have substantial policy disagreements” but said their disagreements were with “success.” Hegseth added that criticism of Pentagon operations, including the Iran war or the mission to seize Maduro, amounted to “taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic.”Hegseth has been the Trump administration’s most prominent and enthusiastic cheerleader for the unpopular conflict in Iran, which spiked energy prices, fueled global inflation and eventually doomed Republicans in the midterm vote on Nov. 3.The resolution is similar to Massie’s previous impeachment effort, which was thwarted ahead of the midterm election when House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed lawmakers just one day after it was introduced.
The motion, which comes before the Democrats take over the House and Senate in January, may pass the House but is unlikely to make it through the still Republican-controlled Senate.Last week, Hegseth posted a six-minute video on X defending his tenure, and noting that Massie, who he described as a “disgruntled, defeated congressman,” has filed “sham articles of impeachment against yours truly.” Also read | Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei orders officials to end ‘neither war nor peace situation’ with USHegseth’s tenure has been marked by numerous controversies, most notably the Iran war and the legally questionable strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. He’s also been criticized for pushing out high-ranking officers, rhetorical attacks on “woke” diversity initiatives and transgender troops, and the rapid depletion of key munitions as a result of the conflict in the Middle East.
He’s also irritated key members of Congress with his lack of transparency to them and the US public about the progress of the war, its cost and its casualties.