WASHINGTON — The House voted 211-204 on Tuesday to send Rep. Thomas Massie’s eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the House Judiciary Committee, blocking an immediate floor vote on the charges, according to the roll-call record kept by the Clerk of the House.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., offered the motion to refer the resolution to committee shortly after 5:30 p.m., and the House approved it at 6:02 p.m. in Roll Call 317, the first and only recorded vote of the evening on the impeachment question.
The tally split almost entirely along party lines. Voting yes were 210 Republicans and the chamber’s one independent. Voting no were 203 Democrats and Massie himself, the Kentucky Republican who wrote the resolution and forced it onto the floor. Seven Republicans and 11 Democrats did not vote.
Massie had warned his followers what the first vote would mean before the House took it up. “Today the House will vote on the Hegseth Impeachment Resolution. The first vote will be on a procedural motion to kill the resolution such as motion to ‘refer to committee.’ If we can overcome that effort, we will proceed to a real debate and vote on the Articles of Impeachment,” he wrote on X on Tuesday.
His side did not overcome it. Because the referral carried, the House never debated the eight articles and never voted on whether Hegseth should be impeached.
A Procedural Reprieve, Not a Verdict
The vote gives Hegseth a reprieve, not an exoneration on the charges themselves. The articles now sit with the Republican-led Judiciary Committee, and any further consideration in this Congress rests with that committee or with later action by the full House.
Massie, a member of that committee, filed the resolution on Monday as a question of the privileges of the House, a step that forced leaders to act within two legislative days. He first read the articles on the floor in September. Speaker Mike Johnson then sent the House into its pre-election recess a day early, and no vote was taken before the midterms.
The eight articles are allegations, not findings. Three of them accuse Hegseth of waging war against Iran in violation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, including by keeping U.S. forces in hostilities after Congress directed their removal and past the law’s 60-day limit. The others accuse him of ignoring laws meant to minimize civilian casualties, directing extrajudicial killings in strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats, retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over protected speech, directing the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and waging an unlawful war in Yemen. Hegseth has denied wrongdoing.
Hegseth and Trump Answer the Vote
Hours before the vote, Hegseth held his first formal Pentagon news conference since May and called the impeachment effort a farce, arguing that a disagreement over policy is not a high crime or misdemeanor. “They impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call,” he said. “They impeached him again in his final week in office. Both times they failed. Both times he came back stronger and the American people sent him back to the White House. Now they’re trying a third time, this time against a member of his cabinet. They will fail again.”
President Donald Trump praised the outcome in a social media post after the vote. “Every single Republican, except Thomas Massie, a major LOSER, voted in favor of Pete. Again, Victories in Venezuela and Iran, the Best Recruitment Numbers in the History of the Military (Long waiting lists to get in!), and Spirit like rarely seen before, led to the EXONERATION of a Great American Patriot,” he wrote.
Had the House voted to impeach, Hegseth would have become only the third Cabinet secretary in U.S. history impeached by the House, and the Senate would have needed a two-thirds vote to remove him. Instead, the articles filed on Monday now wait in committee, in a Congress that gives up power to new Democratic majorities on Jan. 3 — and in which Massie, who lost his Republican primary in May, will no longer serve.
Also Read: Massie Forces House Vote to Impeach Hegseth