The House on Tuesday blocked an attempt to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, voting instead to send the resolution to committee and effectively avoiding an immediate vote on the allegations.
The measure was referred to the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 211 to 204, putting the impeachment effort on hold.
Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who filed the resolution, was the lone Republican to oppose the referral. He joined Democrats in trying, unsuccessfully, to keep the impeachment effort moving.
Massie’s eight articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of conducting military action in Iran without congressional authorization, disregarding laws designed to limit civilian casualties and ordering the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Before the vote, Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins told the Daily Mail that the effort was “1000% politically motivated.” He also said Massie was not acting out of “constitutional motivation.”
“It’s not an impeachable offense to perform perfect military operations precisely according to the orders of the Commander in Chief,” Higgins said.
Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett likewise said Hegseth had committed “no crimes.” He added that lawmakers had raised no objections when they were briefed about strikes on Venezuelan drug boats.
During a rare Pentagon briefing Tuesday morning, Hegseth said he was not intimidated by the impeachment effort unfolding on Capitol Hill.
President Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives this week
Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie filed a resolution seeking to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the US conflict with Iran
“What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight, and it’s not accountability,” Hegseth said at the outset of his remarks. “It’s a political spectacle.”
“That’s what it is: policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offenses the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
On Monday afternoon, Massie went to the House floor to read a 34-page resolution outlining his impeachment case against Hegseth.
The anti-Trump Kentucky Republican also criticized Hegseth for sharply restricting media access to the Pentagon.
No Democrat has publicly indicated opposition to supporting Massie’s resolution to impeach Hegseth.
With 214 Democrats serving in the House, the party needed just three additional Republicans to support an impeachment vote. Massie was one of them, leaving Democrats needing at least two more Republican backers.
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Hegseth has responded by calling Massie “a disgruntled, defeated congressman” and accusing him of putting forward “sham articles of impeachment.”
Still, there were indications that Hegseth’s Republican support might have been weaker than expected.
Kentucky Republican James Comer, a close Trump ally and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the votes for impeachment could exist in the House this week, although he stopped short of saying how he would vote.
“We really didn’t know how to message what the exit strategy was, because I don’t think anybody in Congress knows what the exit strategy is,” Comer told Newsmax before discussing the prospect of an impeachment vote.
Arkansas Republican French Hill, whose district is deeply conservative but who won his race last week by only 4,405 votes, said he wanted to “hear the debate” over whether Hegseth should be impeached.
“I want to hear the debate on it to see if it merits impeachment versus some other disciplinary action or action by the president if he’s not getting the job done in leading the Department of War. That’s the issue,” Hill told CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday.
“If he’s not conducting his mission in the right way, then the president ought to make a change there.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is widely expected to become the next Speaker of the House, has fully endorsed Massie’s impeachment resolution.
“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution,” Jeffries told ABC’s This Week anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday.
“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,” the top House Democrat said. “Pete Hegseth has got to go.”
Massie has accused Hegseth of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” by continuing military operations in Iran despite Congress never formally declaring war in the region.
By introducing a privileged resolution, Massie triggered a vote under a procedure that allows a measure to bypass the usual committee process.
He used the same approach last year to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files, resisting pressure from Republican leaders to abandon his transparency campaign. Massie has also said he will withdraw the impeachment effort only if Hegseth resigns.
An impeachment resolution requires a simple majority to pass the House, while conviction in a Senate trial requires a two-thirds vote.
President Trump has continued to support his Pentagon chief. In a 60 Minutes interview broadcast Sunday, Trump told CBS News that he has confidence in Hegseth.