The House of Representatives, on Tuesday evening, effectively killed an effort to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
All Republicans — except for the resolution’s sponsor, outgoing Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted to refer the measure to the House Judiciary Committee, whence it is unlikely to advance.
Tuesday’s vote ends a short-lived but contentious saga that tested both Massie’s influence and Hegseth’s standing in the lame-duck Republican Congress.
Massie had originally filed the articles of impeachment in September, but the House went out of session until Election Day before he could trigger a vote on them. In the chamber’s first week back after hitting the campaign trail, Massie refiled them and used his privileges as a member to force the House to take it up. In doing so, he circumvented ordinary procedure for impeaching an executive official, which usually involves a series of hearings in a congressional investigation.
Massie levied eight total accusations against Hegseth, which included waging war without congressional approval, extrajudicially killing suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean, and using the department’s authority to silence members of Congress for a video in which they had called on service members not to obey unlawful orders.
“There’s no argument in these impeachment articles that he’s ineffective,” Massie said at a press conference on Monday. “The argument here is that he’s broken laws, and he’s violated the Constitution. And so, that’s the question put in front of my colleagues.”
Hegseth addressed the articles in a press conference on Tuesday morning.
“What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight, and it’s not accountability,” he said. “It’s a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.”
Massie has a long history of opposing foreign intervention, and he has ramped up his criticism of American foreign policy as the Iran war has raged. In response to his opposition, President Donald Trump successfully backed a primary challenger to the Kentucky congressman. Following Hegseth’s remarks at his presser, Trump gave the secretary an “‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS.”
Leading up to the vote, there was some speculation that Republicans who lost their seats in part thanks to the unpopularity of the war would support impeachment, but that theory did not materialize.
Representative Tom Barrett of Michigan, who had supported a resolution to end the war before losing to a progressive Democratic challenger last week, voted with his party to kill the impeachment.
“I think that that’s what’s called for in this circumstance,” he told National Review.
Even those who had been critical of Hegseth’s performance voted against the impeachment because of Massie’s own toxic brand or their dissatisfaction with the specific articles he brought.
“I think he’s a weak secretary, but the areas I think he’s weak on was not so much what’s in that impeachment,” retiring Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska told NR.
Bacon said he might have been open to impeaching Hegseth for other reasons, such as withholding aid to Ukraine or firing a large number of generals since being confirmed by the Senate.
“I don’t agree with the impeachment itself, but I think there were other areas that I could have been talked into,” he said.