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

Washington: US President Donald Trump is standing by his embattled defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, who faces impeachment proceedings in Congress accused of violating war powers laws, conducting extrajudicial killings and suppressing free speech.

Republican congressman Thomas Massie read the articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives on Monday (Washington time), hoping to attract enough Republican support to send the resolution to the US Senate.

Meanwhile, Trump told reporters the Iran war was “militarily effectively over” at a snap news conference after meeting with the Qatari prime minister, and said a return to major combat operations was “quite unlikely”.

The president has made similar remarks many times, and a peace deal to formally end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz remains elusive. But these remarks were seen by some analysts as more definitive, and came amid speculation about a fresh wave of post-election strikes.

Trump also defended Hegseth, crediting him with improving military recruitment and helping “win” the campaign in Iran, as well as the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

“We won two wars, and we’ve made the world a lot safer place,” Trump said, suggesting that politicians who orchestrated previous failed American wars should have been impeached instead. “Massie’s a loser,” he said.

Later, on Truth Social, the president called Hegseth “perhaps the most popular and successful military official in the country”, who should be praised, not impeached. “Congress, stand up for Pete!!!” he wrote.

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.

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.

Despite the midterm election results, Republicans still control both chambers of Congress until January. The House could pass the resolution if enough Republicans joined 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 the midterms.

Hegseth scheduled a news conference about the impeachment for Tuesday morning (Washington 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”.

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