Anybody naive enough to expect Defense – sorry, War – Secretary Pete Hegseth to show any ounce of humility during his first press conference in six months will have come away disappointed, if not enraged, after today’s performance. Hegseth was his usual defiant self, addressing a room full of reporters but really appealing to his beloved boss, President Donald Trump, to keep him in the job.
The subject of discussion: outgoing Representative Thomas Massie’s impeachment resolution against Hegseth, which was formally introduced on the House floor yesterday. The 34-page resolution includes eight articles of impeachment, most of which charge the former Fox News personality-turned-secretary with violating the US Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution by obeying Trump’s unlawful orders to wage war against Iran, Venezuela, the Houthis in Yemen and alleged drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere. “Using the powers of his office,” Article 5 states, “Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth directed the Department of Defense in a manner that resulted in the extrajudicial killings of at least 243 persons aboard seagoing vessels alleged to be smuggling narcotics in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, principally in international waters.”
Hegseth was having none of it. He blasted Massie as a failed politician whose only allies were Democrats bent on revenge. He alleged that trying to throw him out of office was akin to disrespecting the US military as an institution, a desperate attempt to peg all of his opponents as traitors to the country. The only winners in this entire charade, Hegseth implied, were America’s enemies like Iran, whose regime was using this most unjustified witch-hunt as comic relief in between missile and drone attacks against tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Does Hegseth deserve impeachment? A lot of lawmakers on Capitol Hill think so. Hakeem Jeffries, who will likely become Speaker of the House when Democrats regain the majority in January, has said he’s all-in on getting him out of office. Representative Adam Smith, who will soon return as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, supports impeachment as well. Even some senior Republicans aren’t exactly thrilled with Hegseth’s performance over the last two years as requests for information get stalled and funding clashes between the Pentagon and its overseers become more regular. Hegseth doesn’t help himself when he treats his appearances in front of the Armed Services and Appropriations committees as bona-fide Fox News segments, abrading anybody and everybody who doesn’t fully endorse the Trump administration’s wars of choice, massive defense budget requests and firings of overweight generals.
Did Hegseth violate the law to the extent that his removal from office is warranted? Were “high crimes and misdemeanors” perpetrated? Like all impeachments, this is a political question, not a legal one. Even a cabinet officer who commits blatantly unlawful acts can still exercise the power of his or her office if there is enough congressional support behind them. Others can commit no crimes at all but still be on the chopping block for impeachment and removal. Hegseth’s opponents, of course, argue that he has in fact committed crimes by authorizing the targeting of civilians on the high seas as a central plank of the Trump administration’s war on drug traffickers, a mission that has not only killed innocent mariners who have nothing to do with the trade but is also failing to reduce the flow of drugs to the United States.
Ultimately, Massie vs Hegseth is less about Hegseth per se and more about the Trump administration’s unilateral war-making and utter contempt of Congress. Because the war with Iran is at a stalemate and its economic after-shocks have hit the US economy hard, a growing number of lawmakers in both parties are starting to grasp that, gee, allowing a president to unilaterally take the country to war is not a smart thing to do. The founders of the American Republic believed this decision was of such monumental importance to the health and trajectory of the nation that it was beyond a single individual, no matter how powerful, to make. That’s why Congress was entrusted with this power rather than the executive. And yet over the ensuing decades, we’ve all grown accustomed to presidents of both parties subverting the Constitution as if this most cherished document was optional. Lawmakers didn’t mind the arrangement either; why take a vote on war and peace when you could keep your distance and avoid any responsibility when things go wrong?
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened in the lead-up to the Iran War in February. Most lawmakers save a few only knew about hostilities when the bombs were falling. The Trump administration didn’t bother to make a coherent case to the American people as to why another conflict in the Middle East was an absolute necessity for US security – and when administration officials finally came around to it, they essentially threw linguistic spaghetti at the wall to see what explanation stuck the most. More than nine months later, with no end on the horizon, Americans are still asking what it was all for.
It’s too early to say whether Hegseth will survive. But it if we don’t learn the big lesson from this affair, it won’t matter anyway.
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