Brandon DrenonWashington DC
EPA/Reuters
The top Democrat widely expected to be the next US House of Representatives Speaker has said he is “a hard yes” for impeaching Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries told ABC’s programme This Week that Hegseth had “abused his power, undermined our national security, and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran”.
Outgoing Republican congressman Thomas Massie, a foe of President Donald Trump, has said he plans as early as Monday to introduce a resolution to impeach Hegseth, which could result in his removal from office.
The Pentagon told the BBC it had followed the law and that Hegseth would not be deterred by “phony investigations”.
As the current Democratic minority leader in the House, Jeffries is favourite to become Speaker when his party takes control of Congress in January following their landslide victory in last week’s midterm elections.
“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution,” Jeffries told ABC on Sunday.
“Pete Hegseth has got to go,” he continued.
Kentucky congressman Massie’s resolution contains eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, alleging that he made war on Iran without the required congressional authorisation under the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
‘It won’t work’
Jeffries has vowed that the newly empowered Democrats will serve as a check and balance on the Trump administration.
But he said after the midterms results that House Democrats were not currently focused on impeaching President Trump, who was impeached twice during his first term.
Last week, Hegseth released a nearly six-minute video urging Congress to approve the Pentagon’s latest military budget request, before the Republican-controlled legislature’s final days come to an end.
In the clip, he addressed talks of Massie’s impeachment effort, referring to the threat as “sham articles”.
“You see, their policies don’t work. So, their obsession with political theatre disguised as power drives them to try to destroy their opponents,” Hegseth said.
“It’s all about the politics of personal destruction. Didn’t work against President Trump and it won’t work with me.”
Impeachment is a rare process by which the House of Representatives can vote to find an official guilty of misconduct and the Senate can then vote remove to the person from office.
With more midterm races still to be called, Democrats have a 254-seat majority in the House, well beyond the 218 threshold needed to pass articles of impeachment.
But they will fall well short of the two-thirds Senate majority required to remove an official from office, and would require Republicans to side with them – a politically high bar.
