Impeach Pete Hegseth for the Disastrous Iran War
Congress shouldn't be afraid to remove the secretary of defense for his many war crimes and misdemeanors.
Democrats took the House of Representatives and Senate Tuesday night in large part thanks to voter backlash against President Donald Trump's disastrous war of choice against Iran. When the House returns for the lame-duck session, one of the first items of business—whether outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) likes it or not—will be revisiting the articles of impeachment lodged against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for "high crimes and misdemeanors" related to that war.
Johnson rushed the House to early recess in mid-September to avoid a vote on Hegseth's impeachment. But the articles, drawn up by outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), are coming back when the House returns. The GOP gadfly recently announced he intends to force a vote on "week one."
Massie's effort has a real shot even under lame duck math, before the new Democratic majority comes in. Passing it will require only a handful of GOP votes. In September, seven Republicans split from their party to vote for withdrawal from Iran. After Tuesday's electoral shellacking, GOP members should be looking for clear opportunities to distance themselves from Trump's disastrous and unnecessary war. Here's their chance to do that—and reinvigorate a valuable constitutional weapon at the same time.
Massie Wants To Impeach Hegseth for War Crimes and Misdemeanors
Four of the eight articles in Massie's bill of particulars center on Iran, including trampling "Congress' exclusive constitutional authority to declare war;" ignoring congressional strictures designed to protect innocent civilians; and multiple violations of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, such as going past its time limits and blowing off a vote by a majority of both houses directing the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran.
Others involve war crimes closer to home. Massie's fifth article charges Hegseth with ordering "extrajudicial killings" in counternarcotics operations off the coast of Venezuela, through which Hegseth "asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die."
Last month, public distaste over Hegseth's plan to livestream the public execution of the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, prompted Trump to call a halt to the spectacle. Grotesque as the plan was, it was hardly novel: Hegseth had already made state-sponsored killing something of a spectator sport by proudly tweeting out footage of U.S. missile strikes on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. Hasan at least got a trial.
Impeachment Isn't Just for Presidents
Illegal warmaking was the central charge in the first article of the first impeachment under the federal Constitution. In 1797, the House impeached Tennessee Sen. William Blount for conspiring to raise a private army for "a military hostile expedition" against Spanish-held Louisiana and Florida "against the laws of the United States."
Our Constitution's Framers thought presidential ministers were fair targets for the ultimate remedy. As James Madison explained in the first Congress: "If an unworthy man be continued in office by an unworthy president, the House of Representatives can at any time impeach him."
Yet Cabinet-level impeachments never took off in the United States. In our entire constitutional history, we've managed the feat only twice. Most recently, President Joe Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was narrowly impeached by a GOP House, and the charges were dismissed by a Democrat-led Senate. The other, a century and a half ago, was Gilded Age War Secretary William Belknap, impeached due to kickbacks in connection with a military trading post. The House charged Belknap with "basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain." (Apparently, a lot of that's still going around.) The Senate acquitted him, in part because he'd already resigned.
'You're Fired'?
Why have so few department heads been impeached? "The issue has almost invariably proven moot," the legal scholar Frank Bowman explains in his 2019 book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump. Whenever a Cabinet chief becomes "politically toxic" enough to court impeachment, the president typically shoves him off the stage.
Trump could certainly follow that playbook here. Hegseth got his job as Pentagon chief in part because the president liked his look—a buff veteran straight out of "central casting," he's said repeatedly—but lately, with the former Fox & Friends host under heavy fire on Capitol Hill, the bloom is off the rose. This year alone, Trump sacked two department heads, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who caused him political grief.
Or maybe he'll dig in his heels and fight. After beating two impeachments, will Trump want to look like he's been cowed by a third effort, aimed at a subordinate? With a president this mercurial, who can tell?
Either way, the goal shouldn't be simply getting Hegseth's scalp. At its most effective, formal indictment by the House—even without removal by the Senate—has served as a form of constitutional censure. Amid a deeply unpopular war, putting Hegseth in the dock—livestreamed—could leave a lasting mark.