Hegseth vows to fight impeachment ‘spectacle’

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came out swinging against a potential impeachment today, dismissing the charges introduced in the House yesterday as simple “policy disagreements.”

“What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight, and it’s not accountability,” Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon this morning. “It’s a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.”

Hegseth’s comments — the first time he has appeared before press at the Pentagon in over 180 days — come less than 24 hours after Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment against him. Massie, who lost his primary in May to a candidate backed by President Donald Trump, has been an outspoken critic of the administration, and especially Hegseth, over an array of issues. 

In the 34-page resolution [pdf] filed Monday, Massie charged the defense secretary with committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” and called him “a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.”

Specifically, Massie cited eight articles for impeachment centering on:

• Violations of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 related to military operations against Iran;
• Ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties citing the US military strike on the Iranian elementary school that killed or injured more than 200 civilians;
• Suppressing free speech for retaliating on Sen Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, for appearing in a video advising service members of their duty to disobey unlawful orders;
• The kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader associated with the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro,
• Conducting an “unlawful” war in Yemen; and 
• Extrajudicial killings tied to the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific waters.

“By subjecting persons merely suspected of criminal conduct to lethal military force without judicial process, without congressional authorization, and without establishing a lawful basis for treating such persons or vessels as military targets, Secretary Hegseth arrogated to himself and the Executive Branch the roles of judge, jury, and executioner and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die,”  the resolution said on the extrajudicial killings article of impeachment.

Hegseth defended military operations under his watch, calling them “lawful” and “successful.”

“I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again tomorrow,” he said during Tuesday’s briefing.

The House could vote on those articles of impeachment later this week and, if approved by a simple majority, it could be sent to the Senate for a trial under the current GOP leadership or next year when Democrats take control.

The House has only impeached two cabinet secretaries: Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024. (Though Hegseth refers to himself as the Secretary of War, his official title remains Secretary of Defense.)

This is not Massie’s first call to impeach Hegseth. In September, he announced plans to force a vote in the House to impeach Hegseth and had been waiting for Congress to return after the mid-term elections to again push the issue.

As Republicans suffered a historic midterm defeat and the prospect of Massie pushing the impeachment came, news reports emerged suggesting Hegseth’s job could be in jeopardy. At the time Trump told reporters he was not considering replacing Hegseth, but suggested Hegseth would be “very popular” if he became a Senator and took over Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s office when she moved into the Tennessee governor’s mansion.

But later in the week, reports began emerging that Blackburn was not considering appointing Hegseth to her vacant Senate seat.

Around the same time, the Pentagon’s official social media account kicked into high gear to defend Hegseth. It first released a five-plus minute a video of Hegseth standing outside the Pentagon defending the Iran war and denouncing the “sham articles of impeachment.” 

“Their policies don’t work, so their obsession with political theater disguised as power drives them to try to destroy their opponents,” he said on the video posted on X. “It’s all about the politics of personal destruction. Didn’t work against President Trump, and it won’t work with me.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.