Hegseth impeachment: Massie will force a House vote if he does not resign, and Adam Smith promises intensive Pentagon oversight

The impeachment of Pete Hegseth is moving from theory to practice after the Republicans’ rout in the midterm elections of Tuesday, November 3. Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie plans to bring articles of impeachment against War Secretary Hegseth to a vote in the House of Representatives when lawmakers return to Washington next week. Democrat Adam Smith, who is expected to chair the Armed Services Committee, meanwhile demands explanations from the Pentagon and backs his Republican colleague’s move.

Massie attached a condition. “There is one case in which I will not refile the articles of impeachment: if Hegseth resigns,” he wrote on X on Wednesday, November 4. In September the congressman had filed a resolution with eight charges against the secretary, among them that he exceeded his authority in military operations in Iran, Yemen and Venezuela and ignored congressional oversight. The text did not reach a vote before the House recessed for the campaign.

Speaking to CNN, Massie linked the electoral defeat to his party’s policy towards the White House. “You don’t lose elections this badly over a single issue,” he said, adding that “all of this could have been avoided if they had just gotten away from the cult-like devotion to Donald Trump”.

Smith puts Iran first on the list

Smith, a congressman from Washington state, told the Seattle Times his priority will be “oversight at the Pentagon of Pete Hegseth”. He wants Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg to testify before the committee first, and asks for answers on the strike on the girls’ school in Minab, the strike in Kuwait that killed six American service members and the real cost of the American bases destroyed in the Middle East. His backing for impeachment is a turnaround: in May he told TIME that impeachments unintentionally strengthen those targeted and questioned whether it is smart strategy.

In a written statement on the committee Democrats’ priorities in the new Congress, Smith writes that “vigorous oversight” of the department and the Trump administration comes first, with more public testimony from senior officials and the re-establishment of an Oversight and Investigations subcommittee. He names the “illegal war against Iran” as the issue that concerns him and Americans most, and adds sweetheart deals and favouritism towards certain entities and individuals, contracts with private companies, unauthorised strikes in the Caribbean and Latin America, the deployment of troops in American cities and purges in the armed forces on grounds of political loyalty and ideology.

Republicans turn on the secretary

The pressure does not come only from the opposition. Republican lawmakers and allies, speaking anonymously to CNN, assign Hegseth a central role in the decision to attack Iran with no exit strategy and argue he overestimated how quickly and easily the US would win. Several party sources expect the vote to pass. Impeachment needs a simple majority in the House, while removal requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, where Democrats won the majority; see our report on the Senate result.

Trump said his secretary is doing a “very good job” and that he does not intend to remove him; see Trump on the Iran war. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth “will not back down” in the face of politicians seeking to score partisan points or launch “sham investigations” and that he is “100% committed” to leading the department until the end of Trump’s term. The secretary has been under fire for weeks over the removal of senior officers, including the Joint Staff’s director of planning.