The US House of Representatives voted 211–204 on Tuesday night to send an impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the House Judiciary Committee, effectively blocking a planned vote on whether to bring formal charges against him over the Hegseth impeachment effort.
FAKTA
- The House voted 211–204 to refer the impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee.
- Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday.
- Massie was the only Republican to vote against sending the resolution to committee.
- The articles accuse Hegseth of waging war in Iran without congressional approval and other alleged offences.
- If impeached, Hegseth would become only the third cabinet secretary in US history to be impeached by the House.
What the House decided
House Republican leaders moved to derail the effort before it could reach a vote on the articles themselves. Sending the resolution to committee means the planned vote on Wednesday on whether to bring formal charges will not go ahead as scheduled.
Speaker Mike Johnson had opposed the effort. He said impeachment “in the middle of hostilities abroad” would be “a terrible thing for our allies and our enemies to see”, according to Reuters.
President Donald Trump welcomed the result on Truth Social after the vote, writing that the attempt to impeach Hegseth had “miserably FAILED” and that every Republican except Massie had voted in favour of his defence secretary.
The eight articles in the Hegseth impeachment effort
Massie introduced the eight articles on Monday, accusing Hegseth of “high crimes and misdemeanours”. Three of the charges relate to the war in Iran: Hegseth is accused of directing, authorising and sustaining military action beyond the 60-day limit set by the War Powers Resolution, without a formal declaration of war or authorisation for the use of military force from Congress.
Two charges relate to Venezuela, and the articles also cover military strikes in Yemen and strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. A further article accuses Hegseth of retaliating against Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona over his speech, despite legal protections for it.
Hegseth has denied wrongdoing, and Trump has pledged to stand by his defence secretary.
Hegseth calls the effort a “farce”
Hegseth addressed the articles at a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday morning, his first in six months. “It’s a farce, and it’s a stunt, and everybody knows it,” he said, adding that “everything has been lawful from day one” in the Iran, Yemen and Caribbean operations.
He described Massie as a “single rogue legislator loaded with personal animus against the president” and said the impeachment attempt “puts a target on the backs of American warriors by signalling that Congress will undermine their missions in real time”.
Massie, who lost his primary and will leave Congress in January, had warned that officials who served under Hegseth could testify against him in a congressional investigation. “They are not going to be as polite as I am,” he told CNN, adding that Democrats would hold hearings in the House when they take control. He also predicted that Hegseth would not remain in his job until the end of the year.
What happens next
The resolution now sits with the Judiciary Committee, and no vote on the articles themselves has been scheduled. Under the privileged procedure, the resolution will expire on 3 January 2027 if it does not receive a vote on its merits by then, when Democrats take control of both chambers of Congress. Massie will not return to Congress next year, so a different House member would need to reintroduce the articles at that point.
If the House had voted to impeach Hegseth, he would have become only the third cabinet secretary ever impeached, after William Belknap, the secretary of war in 1876, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the former homeland security secretary, in 2024. Neither was convicted when the vote reached the Senate, where removal requires a two-thirds majority of 67 votes.
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