WASHINGTON–Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fended off an impeachment effort Tuesday evening in the House, after GOP votes helped to kill the effort to punish him for his actions as President Trump’s Pentagon chief.
Ahead of the vote, Hegseth mounted a vigorous defense of his record in a rare news conference.
He called Massie a “disgruntled and defeated congressman” and said the impeachment articles were framed as policy disagreements and nothing more. “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 impeachment laws,” Hegseth said.
Trump said he would “stand by” Hegseth if he were impeached and praised the secretary’s press conference. “Pete Hegseth gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense,” Trump wrote on social media Tuesday immediately following the Pentagon briefing.
House Democrats are expected to revive the effort when they take control of Congress in January. “ I don’t agree that Pete Hegseth should be impeached. Warren Davidson (R., Ohio).
Massie said he wanted to give the House a chance to vote on each of the eight articles of impeachment, giving members the opportunity to reject some of the proposals while agreeing to others. And at the end of the day, I think trying to make Pete Hegseth the scapegoat really blame shifts and avoids responsibility for Congress and, frankly, President Trump,” said Rep. “I have concerns about the way the department has been run, and I question whether the information that is coming through the secretary out of the Pentagon has been accurate in the way he is portraying the war to the president,” she said. “If there is deception coming from our Pentagon and being transmitted to the president, I would want to know that.”
