Conviction would require a two-thirds Senate vote, and Johnson has no timetable
Pentagon deputy press secretary Joel Valdez said Pete Hegseth’s team convened this week to map out an “aggressive defense” of the defense secretary if Rep. Thomas Massie follows through on plans to force an impeachment vote next week. “What we’ve learned from this president is never back down,” Valdez told reporters. If his congressional opponents vote to impeach him, Hegseth plans to use the confrontation as a platform to defend his agenda, which includes the war with Iran, the ouster of senior military officers and rolling back past diversity policies.
Special adviser Tim Parlatore said Hegseth is vowing to stay at the Pentagon for the rest of the Trump administration. “He’s not going anywhere,” Parlatore said. “He intends to serve the full four years.”
Hegseth has also defended his tenure in public. In a video taken on the steps of the Pentagon and released Thursday, he portrayed himself as a warrior for Trump’s agenda, suggesting that his ouster would amount to a rebuke of the White House and the broader MAGA movement. “We are more determined than ever, more resolute than ever to finish what we have started,” Hegseth said. “We will stand. We will fight, and we will defend this republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Late Friday, President Trump announced that Stephen Miller would be his next chief of staff. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hegseth’s place within the Trump administration appeared more secure after the announcement, even as more lawmakers would like him to depart the Pentagon. Trump has told associates privately, and said publicly, that he is still backing Hegseth. Within minutes of Miller’s appointment, Hegseth posted “Patriots in control” on his personal social-media account and shared a photo of himself with the newly appointed White House chief of staff. Hegseth has long aligned himself with Miller, favoring the expanded use of the military to secure the southern border and strike suspected drug smugglers.
The procedure would begin in the House. Massie, a Kentucky Republican, has signaled that he plans to force an impeachment vote next week. If the House votes to impeach Hegseth, he would become the first civilian defense chief to face an impeachment vote in the chamber since Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876. Belknap resigned his post and was acquitted by the Senate. There is no timetable for Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, to send articles to the Senate for trial, though the same majority that passed an impeachment resolution could theoretically force him to do so. A two-thirds Senate vote would be required to convict and remove Hegseth. Hegseth’s supporters at the Pentagon have described the push for impeachment as political grandstanding with little chance of succeeding.
The dispute has put the administration’s Iran strategy under congressional scrutiny, and even Republican lawmakers who have backed Trump on the war are voicing serious misgivings about Hegseth. “I can tell you that there’s a lot of questions about Hegseth,” said Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, in an appearance on NewsNation. “We have no idea what the strategy is moving forward on Iran.”
Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, warned in an interview that a defiant performance from Hegseth during a Senate impeachment trial would further damage the administration’s relationships on Capitol Hill and torpedo the Trump administration’s hopes of securing additional military funding. “He has poisoned the well so much with members of Congress,” including many Republicans, Tillis said of Hegseth. “He should also pay attention to what happened on [Election Day] Tuesday because it wasn’t a ringing endorsement of him doing the same thing of ‘fight, fight, fight.’”
Tillis provided the pivotal vote to confirm Hegseth last January but said he now has a “profound case of buyer’s remorse.” He said he would not only support impeachment but would “encourage others to do the same.” Tillis predicted that Hegseth would at minimum face a vote of no confidence from more than half the Senate, even if there are not enough votes to remove him.
Hegseth’s critics hope Trump will reconsider that support if congressional opposition to the defense secretary begins to imperil the Pentagon’s spending requests, including for military operations in the Middle East. Midterm election setbacks have sometimes been followed by shake-ups on the White House national security team: after Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, during a low point in the U.S. war in Iraq, President George W. Bush acknowledged the “thumping” by Democrats and announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Wall Street Journal said Hegseth has qualities Trump has long prized, including unqualified loyalty to the president, which the defense secretary has displayed conspicuously in speeches, television appearances and social media. Charles Stevenson, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University who wrote a history of defense secretaries, said the social-media campaign Hegseth and his aides have launched to protect his job is without precedent and could backfire in Congress. “It’s a pitch to Trump and to Republicans in Congress, but it is not a pitch to the American public or Democrats,” Stevenson said. “There is no hint of compromise and it is unlikely to work.”
Rep. Adam Smith, the Washington-state Democrat expected to lead the House Armed Services Committee next year, said he supports the effort to impeach Hegseth. “Hegseth thought he was like the head of some cheerleader pep rally, as opposed to running an organization, and fired a lot of very intelligent people,” Smith said in an interview. “There’s plenty to work with.”
Even if Hegseth survives an impeachment attempt this year, Democrats could impeach him again next year, when they gain control of Congress and might have as many as nine more Democratic senators. The new Democratic majorities would wield subpoena power in both chambers, with the ability to seek documents and depositions under oath from Hegseth and other Pentagon officials. Using the power of the purse, and a handful of Republican votes in the Senate, they could also try to deprive the Defense Department of the money required to continue the Iran war.
One way out of the administration’s dilemma, some Republicans have speculated, might be for Blackburn, the newly elected governor of Tennessee, to appoint Hegseth to her vacant Senate seat. Pentagon officials said Hegseth has reassured his allies that he is not angling for the seat, which will be in a Senate controlled by Democrats. A Tennessee GOP operative close to Blackburn said she and Trump have not spoken about the idea and that Hegseth is not being considered. “This is nothing more than Washington, D.C., spin from a bunch of consultants with nothing better to do,” the operative said. “The Blackburn team is focused on the transition, not entertaining baseless speculation. D.C. won’t pick the next senator.”