‘Judge, jury and executioner’: Republican congressman files resolution to impeach Hegseth

Washington: Republican congressman Thomas Massie has filed a resolution to impeach US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing that he abused the power of his office by waging war against Iran without congressional approval and in the absence of an imminent threat.

Massie, who has split from President Donald Trump and the administration on several key issues, read out the impeachment resolution in the House of Representatives on Monday afternoon (US time).

Over eight articles of impeachment, Massie accused Hegseth of violating multiple sections of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, ignoring laws that minimise civilian casualties, conducting extrajudicial killings of people on boats alleged to be carrying drugs, suppressing free speech and kidnapping a foreign leader.

Hegseth, speaking earlier on Monday, defended his record as having made the world a better and safer place, and dismissed criticism as “politically motivated”. He said he was not worried about gathering enough votes to defeat the impeachment resolution.

The defence secretary was also backed by Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who both called the attempt to impeach him “unfair”.

Speaking further to Reuters, Trump said of Hegseth: “Well, he won two wars. I don’t know how you can impeach him. What about impeaching the people from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and all of that, where we fought forever, and nothing happened?“

Addressing the House, Massie alleged Hegseth had breached the War Powers Resolution because he “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders to initiate war against a foreign nation [Iran]” without authorisation by Congress.

Hegseth continued to break the law by ignoring a congressional resolution directing the president to remove US forces from hostilities with Iran, Massie said.

Massie also accused Hegseth of ignoring laws that minimise civilian casualties, citing the death or injury of more than 200 civilians at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran on the first day of the war in February.

Hegseth directed the Defence Department in a manner that “foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives”, he said.

Massie put on public record details of the incident, for which the Pentagon has not admitted responsibility. The school was hit by three BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from US Navy warships, he said. They struck between 10.23am and 10.45am on a Saturday morning, while students were at the school.

“Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians and abused the trust of the men and women under his command by requiring them to conduct military operations within a targeting and legal-review system that he had deliberately degraded,” Massie told the House.

In other articles of impeachment, the Republican congressman accused Hegseth of the extrajudicial killings of 243 alleged drug traffickers on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

By killing people who were merely suspected of criminal conduct – and without establishing a lawful basis for treating them as military targets – Hegseth “arrogated to himself and the Executive Branch the roles of judge, jury and executioner, and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die”, Massie said.

He also accused Hegseth of suppressing free speech by attempting to intimidate Democratic senator Mark Kelly over criticism, kidnapping a sovereign foreign leader by the abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, and executing an unlawful war in Yemen through Operation Rough Rider in March 2025.

Massie told the House that Hegseth acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law and had demonstrated that he would remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.

Republicans still control both chambers of Congress until January. The House could pass the resolution if a small number of Republicans join Democrats in voting to impeach Hegseth, though the Senate would still have to convict him to remove him from office.

Massie, who is retiring from Congress, had widely telegraphed his intention to reintroduce a resolution to impeach Hegseth after last week’s midterm elections.

Hegseth has scheduled a news conference about the impeachment for Tuesday morning (US time), but defended his record when he briefly spoke to reporters while travelling on Monday.

“We’re not worried about that,” he said of the impeachment proceedings. “There’s a lot of politically motivated people who may have substantial policy disagreements – but their disagreements are with success.

“Getting our European partners to step up is historic. Getting these countries in Central and South America to come together into a counter-cartel coalition and put the cartels on the run is historic.

“The things that we’ve accomplished in [operations] Midnight Hammer and Absolute Resolve and Southern Spear and Epic Fury are things that will change the face of the globe for a generation.

“We are very proud of the president’s America First agenda, of our ‘peace through strength’ posture. We know the world is a better and safer place as a result. So if we want to litigate that, the success of those things, I’m happy to do it all day long.”

Hegseth said people who took issue with what the US did in those military operations were “taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished”.