WASHINGTON
The US House of Representatives voted 211-204 on Tuesday to send a resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to committee, effectively killing the effort.
Republicans backed the motion 210-1 and were joined by the chamber’s lone independent, while all 203 Democrats who voted opposed it. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, who authored the resolution, was the only Republican to vote against it.
Massie’s resolution, introduced Monday, contained eight articles of impeachment. They accuse Hegseth of waging war with Iran without congressional authorization, carrying out “extrajudicial killings” in airstrikes against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea, illegally seizing then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, targeting Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and carrying out an unlawful war in Yemen.
President Donald Trump welcomed the result on social media.
“The Democrats’ attempt to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has miserably FAILED! Every single Republican, except Thomas Massie, a major LOSER, voted in favor of Pete,” he wrote.
“Victories in Venezuela and Iran, the Best Recruitment Numbers in the History of the Military … and Spirit like rarely seen before, led to the EXONERATION of a Great American Patriot,” he added.
Hegseth dismissed the effort at a Pentagon news conference earlier Tuesday.
“It’s a farce, and it’s a stunt and everybody knows it,” he said. “These are not high crimes. This is the job, and it’s the job well done.”
The vote came a week after Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Vice President JD Vance tied that defeat directly to the Iran war.
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote on the US social media platform X on Nov. 4.
Trump has said the war was “a part of” the losses but defended his decision to attack Iran.
“I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
