Massie moves to force Hegseth impeachment vote

WASHINGTON — Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., took to the House floor Monday to unveil a resolution that would impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and a vote on the issue could occur by Wednesday.

A draft resolution that Massie read aloud on the House floor on Monday accused Hegseth of eight violations of law or the Constitution, including that he violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution in his prosecution of the Iran war and acted illegally in military campaigns in Venezuela, Yemen, the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Massie’s resolution also charges Hegseth with disregarding protection of civilians in wartime and suppressing the free speech of a U.S. senator.

Massie announced his intention to file the resolution as a matter of the privileges of the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will now have to rule as to whether the resolution constitutes a proper question of the privileges of the House. There is precedent from prior instances when impeachment was found to be valid as it relates to the House’s constitutionally granted powers.

He must schedule a vote to occur within two legislative days. Assuming that the speaker rules that Massie’s resolution is privileged, the House could vote on the resolution itself, or on a motion to table it or refer it to committee.

If the House were to impeach Hegseth under this process, it would mark a historical anomaly. According to the Congressional Research Service, recent attempts to impeach an official as a matter of the privileges of the House have not resulted in approval of the resolution. In cases in which an official has been impeached, the House has nearly always chosen to conduct an investigation first.

In an interview on Oct. 26, Massie put the chances of his resolution being adopted at 50-50.

In comments to reporters outside the Capitol after his floor remarks, Massie said he suspected some Republicans may back his resolution but he indicated he has neither asked for nor received any such assurances from any of them.

He predicted there could be some GOP support in the Senate if Hegseth is impeached and it goes to trial. He noted that if the trial does not start until 2027, any Republicans who might vote to convict Hegseth would presumably be joined by most if not all of a more sizeable Senate Democratic caucus.

Massie’s odds of success for his resolution may now be greater than his previous 50-50 prediction given the results of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, which gave Democrats control over both chambers in the next Congress — a vote motivated largely by opposition to the Iran war and its inflationary impact.

The questions now are, first, how many House Republicans will defy President Donald Trump and vote to impeach Hegseth; and, secondly, how many incumbents who lost their reelection bids on Nov. 3, a cohort that is disproportionately Republican, might be absent for the impeachment vote?

Massie said some Republicans who lost their reelection bids may feel freer to vote to impeach Hegseth. And he also said Republicans who were reelected and will have to face voters in 2028 may also think about how their vote on an impeachment resolution would reverberate politically.

“It’s going to be everybody’s conscience, and then they’ll have to live with that vote,” Massie said. “And they’re going to have to live with that vote two years from now if they’re not part of the retirement caucus. And if they were part of the retirement caucus, what do they have to lose?”

Asked why he did not bring articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, Massie said: “I think the president needs to see one of — this is a metaphor — one of his horses shot out from under him, and then maybe he’ll he will see things differently.”

‘Hard yes’

If the House does vote on Massie’s resolution, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who is expected to become the House speaker in the next Congress, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that he would be a “hard yes” on it.

Hegseth has “got to go,” Jeffries said. “The so-called secretary of Defense has abused his power, undermined our national security and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran, which has skyrocketed prices on the American people and made the country less safe.”

Most if not all House Democrats are expected to agree.

Last week, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee and its likely chairman in the next Congress, indicated in an interview with The New Republic that he would support Massie’s impeachment resolution, and he predicted it would be adopted.

Referring to Massie’s measure, Smith said, “By every estimation, it will pass and he will be impeached. And off that goes to the Senate. Then the Senate is legally required to spend all of their time dealing with that until it’s done with.”

“Every second Pete Hegseth remains at the top of the Pentagon, our servicemembers are at risk,” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a post on X on Sunday.

Also on Monday, Everett B. Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents some 820,000 federal and D.C. government employees, sent a letter to House members urging a “yes” vote on Massie’s Hegseth impeachment resolution.

The letter cited the risks Kelley said the Iran war has posed to the lives of the Defense Department’s uniformed and civilian personnel, and the missive noted Hegseth’s stripping of workplace rights and protections for the department’s civilians.

“By adopting Rep. Massie’s resolution, the House can begin the long overdue bipartisan effort to reclaim its constitutional powers and authority, restore checks and balances, and take responsibility for the lives of military personnel and civilian employees that Mr. Hegseth’s capricious leadership has jeopardized,” Kelley wrote.

Eight articles

Massie announced in mid-September his intention to file an impeachment resolution against Hegseth. But Johnson adjourned the House before the vote would have occurred.

Massie’s new resolution is substantially the same as his earlier one, with the same eight articles of impeachment.

The first three of these alleges that Hegseth’s conduct of the Iran war violated the War Powers Resolution.

Massie’s measure says Hegseth prosecuted the Iran war without congressional authorization and in the absence of an attack on the United States or an imminent threat.

Further, the measure alleges that Hegseth continued the war despite the House and Senate adopting in June a concurrent war powers resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the fight.

And, the resolution says, Hegseth continued the Iran war after the expiration of the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day termination period and any potential 30-day withdrawal period.

Massie’s measure further asserts that Hegseth:

•Disregarded and sought to overturn laws designed to protect civilians during armed conflict.

•Conducted extrajudicial killings of at least 243 suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere, including strikes on shipwrecked survivors at sea in at least one instance.

•Suppressed free speech by retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., for constitutionally protected speech that had questioned unlawful military orders;

•Oversaw the allegedly illegal operation in January that seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Caracas.

•Directed and oversaw a wave of strikes in Yemen that were not authorized by Congress or justified by an imminent threat and that were said to have killed more than 700 people, nearly a third of them civilians, as well as Houthi rebels.

The House has only voted twice to impeach a member of the Cabinet. In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached over allegations of corruption, and his abrupt resignation likely contributed to his acquittal in the Senate.

In 2024, the House voted 214-213 to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, then-secretary of Homeland Security, for “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust.” The Senate dispensed with the charges without a trial.