The House Blocked the Bid to Impeach Defense Secretary Hegseth on November 10 by 211 Votes to 204: the Eight Articles Were Referred to the Judiciary Committee After Hegseth Told His First Pentagon Briefing in Six Months That the Charges Were Policy Disagreements
Republicans in the US House of Representatives blocked an effort on Tuesday, November 10, to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The chamber voted 211 to 204 in favor of a motion to refer eight articles of impeachment to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, a move that the sponsor of the impeachment push, Representative Thomas Massie, had warned would kill it.
Massie, an outgoing Kentucky Republican, had hoped to draw votes from Republicans upset with Hegseth's policies and wary of the unpopularity of the Iran war, but no other Republicans joined him.
Democrats had voiced strong support for the impeachment effort, but 11 Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, did not vote. If eight of them had voted against the motion, the procedural measure would have been defeated, paving the way for a full House impeachment vote, Reuters reported. Pelosi's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why she missed the vote.
The vote came just hours after Hegseth, at his first Pentagon briefing in six months, delivered a defiant defense of his record at the helm of the US military. The Associated Press reported that Hegseth said the charges were policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, and called the effort a political spectacle and a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.
President Donald Trump cheered the result in a social media post, saying the effort to impeach Hegseth has miserably failed, and adding that Hegseth's performance on Iran, Venezuela and other issues led to the exoneration of a great American patriot. Vice President JD Vance voiced support for Hegseth on Tuesday, writing that this isn't about Iran, it is about the fact that Pete took on the bureaucracy at the Pentagon.
Before the vote, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Monday that Pete Hegseth has abused his power, undermined America's national security, and is the architect of the reckless and costly failed war of choice in Iran. Jeffries said he would talk to members about whether to mount a new impeachment effort in the next Congress, and that the conversation would happen at the appropriate time.
Hegseth would have been the first US defense secretary to be impeached. The last time any civilian leader of the US military was impeached was in 1876, when William Belknap held the title of secretary of war. Massie said he was disappointed by the vote, comparing Republicans to passengers content to go down with the Titanic and saying they know it is a sinking ship but are committed to stay on board.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday found that a majority of Americans want the newly elected Democratic-majority US Congress, which takes office in January, to act to end the war with Iran once and for all. Some Republicans say Hegseth's strained relations with Congress are becoming a political liability as the Trump administration seeks a huge increase in the military's budget to 1.5 trillion dollars from 950 billion dollars, Reuters reported. This item reports only the briefing remarks, the vote count and the public statements made.
来源链接： https://941theduke.com/2026/11/10/pentagon-chief-hegseth-calls-moves-to-impeach-him-a-farce-that-will-fail/
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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