WASHINGTON — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) says he will force a House vote next week on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, reviving eight articles of impeachment announced in September accusing Hegseth of waging the Iran war unlawfully.
Massie set out one condition in a post on X on Wednesday night.
“There is one contingency in which I won’t reintroduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns.”
He has put the resolution’s chances of passing at better than 50 percent.
Multiple Republican sources told CNN they expect the measure to pass.
Tuesday’s midterms cost Republicans the House and the Senate. The push came a day later. Since then, lawmakers and party allies have been looking for someone to blame, and many have settled on Hegseth. Republicans who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity said Hegseth pushed President Donald Trump into attacking Iran with no exit strategy, and oversold how quickly and easily the United States could win. The war has instead ground on, and they blamed it for the affordability pressures that drove voters away from the party.
Vice President JD Vance reached a blunter version of the same conclusion on Wednesday, writing in a lengthy post on X that “the reason we lost is the war,” as Virginia Times reported when Vance said the Iran war cost Republicans the midterms. Vance did not name Hegseth.
The eight articles
Massie sits on the House Judiciary Committee. He first brought the articles to the House floor in September, reading a 34-page resolution. Article I is about the war’s legal basis. It charges Hegseth with waging the Iran war in contravention of Section 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973: no declaration of war, no statutory authorization, no attack on the United States, no imminent threat.
Article II charges that he kept the war going after both houses of Congress directed the removal of U.S. forces through H. Con. Res. 86, in contravention of Section 5(c). Article III says he treated mandatory statutory deadlines as discretionary: hostilities continued past the resolution’s 60-day termination period and any 30-day withdrawal period, in contravention of Section 5(b).
The fourth article accuses Hegseth of ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties. The fifth accuses him of replacing maritime law enforcement with unauthorized lethal military targeting of suspected drug traffickers, resulting in at least 221 deaths, and cites denial of quarter, secondary strikes on survivors and a failure to rescue shipwrecked people.
The sixth article charges retaliation against Sen. Mark Kelly for constitutionally protected speech questioning unlawful military orders. The seventh accuses Hegseth of directing Operation Absolute Resolve to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, without constitutional or legal authority. The eighth charges an unlawful war in Yemen, Operation Rough Rider, begun without congressional authorization or an imminent threat to the United States. The charges are allegations in Massie’s resolution, not findings of wrongdoing.
“By engaging in hostilities in Iran for more than 90 days without congressional authorization, Secretary Hegseth is breaking the law and must be held accountable,” Massie said when he announced the articles in September. In the same statement, he accused Hegseth of abusing the power of his office “to kidnap foreign leaders, and to intimidate critics of the Trump administration by retaliating against them for exercising free speech.”
How the vote would work
Massie plans to give notice of the resolution during the week beginning Nov. 9, when the House returns. If the parliamentarian rules that it qualifies for privileged consideration, the speaker would have up to two legislative days to schedule it, and members could vote to impeach or move to table the measure and kill it. Impeachment takes a simple majority in the House. Removal would then require conviction by two-thirds of the senators present at a trial.
Whoever wins that vote, it will be cast by the Congress that is leaving. Republicans hold the House until Jan. 3, when the new Congress is sworn in. Massie will not be part of it. He lost his Republican primary in May to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL whom Hegseth had traveled to Kentucky to campaign for.
Trump and the Pentagon stand by Hegseth
Trump has not joined the criticism. Asked on Wednesday whether he was considering replacing Hegseth, he said he thought the defense secretary was “doing a very good job,” and he defended his own decision to go to war. “If I had it to do again, I’d have to do it again,” he said. In an interview with ABC, he acknowledged that allies had called to complain about Hegseth, brushed the complaints aside and vowed to keep him on.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth “will not back down or be deterred by politicians seeking to score partisan points or launch phony investigations where no wrongdoing exists.” Parnell added: “Secretary Hegseth is 100% committed to leading the Department until the end of President Trump’s term in office.” A person close to Hegseth told CNN he expects to stay in the job and is ready to fight an impeachment effort.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis, in a statement, attacked the prospect of Democratic investigations into the Pentagon. “If Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people,” Bis said.
Massie, for his part, is not laying the defeat at one man’s feet. “You don’t screw up this badly an election with just one issue,” he said. “It was completely avoidable if they’d just broken out of the cultish following of Donald Trump.”
Have something to promote?
Bring your business, services or event to our readers.