Thomas Massie pushes surprise impeachment vote of Pete Hegseth

By Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — House Democrats were privately dreading a politically charged — but purely symbolic — vote on impeaching President Donald Trump triggered by one of their own members.

Then came something unexpected.

Just hours before that vote, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie surprised his colleagues with a push to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a stunning act of intraparty warfare that deepens the rogue congressman’s rift with Trump and GOP leaders.

Massie’s push to impeach Hegseth, like the Democratic push to impeach Trump, is doomed to fail. Yet both votes have created headaches for their respective party leaders, neither of whom want to spend the final days in session before the midterms dealing with impeachment drama that exposes intraparty rifts.

Massie’s impeachment push — with dozens of pages of legal arguments — appeared to have been in the works for weeks. But he told reporters Tuesday that he did not inform party leaders of his plans to introduce the articles of impeachment against Hegseth.

Republicans do not want to watch Massie make history as the first member of Congress to try to impeach a Cabinet member of the same party — particularly after he lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent this spring. And they’re furious he made the move without informing leadership, according to multiple sources.

“I didn’t give anybody heads-up,” Massie told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “When they found out I was doing the Epstein discharge petition, they canceled two weeks of Congress, and I think if they found out I was going to do this, they might have canceled even more days.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are irritated that their colleague — Rep. Al Green, who also lost his primary in May — is forcing the impeachment vote at a time when Republicans would otherwise be facing pressure on tariffs, gas prices and AI. Their moods lifted, however, once Massie took to the floor to announce his intention to force a vote to impeach Hegseth.

“Just when you think Al Green screws us, Massie turns around and gives it right back to the Rs,” one Democratic aide quipped.

Just ahead of a seven-week recess, the House is now confronting dueling impeachment headaches — both from members who won’t be in Congress next year and who have proved uncontrollable by party leaders.

The House is set to hold a vote to table — or block — the Trump impeachment resolution Tuesday afternoon. It’s not clear when a vote will be held on the Hegseth impeachment measure, but it could take place this week. Party leaders must hold a vote within the coming days — unless they decide to send the House home early.

In his 34-page resolution, Massie argues that Hegseth has repeatedly abused the powers of his office in leading the US war with Iran, including carrying out unlawful orders and continuing to keep troops deployed without authorization from Congress.

Hegseth, he argued, “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law.” Massie spent multiple hours reading aloud his resolution on the House floor.

Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday defended Hegseth in light of the impeachment push, arguing that he “follows the law.”

“Secretary Hegseth is doing a phenomenal job, and the secretary of war doesn’t just go off and do things. So, he follows the law. And so the DOJ plays a role in that, and we play an active role in making sure the laws are complied with,” Blanche said while holding a press briefing in the White House Rose Garden.

The impeachment resolution touched on more than Iran. Massie also took aim at Hegseth for what he called the “kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader” in Venezuela, referring to the capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro. He accused the Pentagon of kidnapping the nation’s leader “under the guise of narcotics law enforcement, though in actuality intended to assert U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil reserves.”

Democrats’ resolution, meanwhile, is less politically explosive for the party. Still, it requires a tricky calculation for the party in the minority.

The party has impeached Trump twice already when they held the majority in his first term. But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team have been careful to keep their political focus on the rising cost of living. Democrats’ path back into the majority will need to come through battleground seats that Trump has previously won — and they do not want to alienate independent and GOP voters with impeachment rhetoric.

But Democrats also know their base detests Trump, with many voters eager to see him impeached a third time.

Jeffries and his leadership team said in a joint statement Monday night that they will vote “present” — rather than committing to an up or down vote — on a procedural measure related to Green’s impeachment push.

“Impeachment is a sacred constitutional vehicle designed to hold a corrupt executive accountable for abuse of power, breaking the law and violating the public trust,” they said, noting the process requires “comprehensive investigative” work to lay out the evidence and convince the American public, which they said Green has not done.

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CNN’s Lauren Fox and Ellis Kim contributed to this report.