The Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday to sideline an impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The chamber voted 211-204 in favor of shelving the resolution. Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who introduced the resolution, was the only Republican to vote against sending it back to committee, which effectively killed it.
The resolution held that Mr. Hegseth waged an unlawful war against Iran, ignored laws designed to “minimize civilian casualties” and unlawfully killed suspected drug traffickers.
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It also stated that Mr. Hegseth suppressed the free speech of Sen. Mark Kelly, Arizona Democrat, illegally kidnapped the leader of Venezuela and waged an unlawful war in Yemen.
Despite the action, the impeachment threat will likely follow Mr. Hegseth.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, has expressed support for the impeachment of Mr. Hegseth and will have ample votes to pursue it once the next Congress convenes in January.
Most House Democratic candidates also expressed support on the campaign trail for impeaching Mr. Hegseth.
“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution. 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,” Mr. Jeffries said on ABC.
Ultimately, a two-thirds vote in the Senate is required to convict in an impeachment trial, an unlikely outcome in the next Congress as the Democrats will have between 54 and 56 seats of the 100-member Senate.
Mr. Hegseth decried the resolution at a press conference earlier Tuesday, saying it sent a message to enemies that “the United States will actually punish its own warfighters and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations.”
Acknowledging the low popularity of the Iran war, Mr. Hegseth said, “History will judge the Iran war quite differently than conventional wisdom right now.”
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon for the first time in six months, Mr. Hegseth described the push for his impeachment on Capitol Hill as historically unprecedented and as an attack on U.S. troops who carried out operations in Iran, Venezuela and the Caribbean.
He emphatically denied that the U.S. military directly targeted civilians and described the accusations as “slander.”
“On the eve of Veterans Day, these resolutions tell every one of them that their service was a crime,” he said. “The only people who target civilians are the terrorists that we hunt, and I will dignify this claim no further.”
Mr. Hegseth said Mr. Massie’s articles of impeachment do not meet the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that are appropriate to remove someone from office.
“They are not the kinds of offenses the Founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause,” Mr. Hegseth said.
Mr. Hegseth said no secretary of war or secretary of defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations. Although two Cabinet secretaries have previously faced impeachment — Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024 — neither was accused of actions related to military command or combat operations.
“And in our case, successful ones at that,” he said. “That’s the standard … and one disgruntled congressman wants to shred it over policy disagreements.”
Ahead of the vote, President Trump stood by his defense secretary.
“Pete Hegseth gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” he said in a social media post.
Mr. Massie lost to Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed challenger, in the most expensive U.S. House primary in history. Mr. Hegseth traveled to Kentucky and personally campaigned for Mr. Gallrein.
Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican, said before the vote that he had criticisms of Mr. Hegseth for “firing 80 generals and not spending appropriated money,” but he disagreed with using the resolution to express opposition to the Iran war.
“I want us to win in Iran. Iran’s been killing us for 47 years, so I have a different perspective than Massie on this,” he said.
“It’s a waste of time,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman, Indiana Republican. “Hegseth answers to the commander in chief, and I support him, and I think he’s executed so many of these missions very well.”
Mr. Massie’s impeachment push derailed the Republican legislative agenda before the midterm elections, as leadership chose to end Congress’ work prematurely in mid-September rather than vote on it.
• Vaughn Cockayne contributed to this report.
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