Update: Tuesday, 8:35 p.m. Embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth narrowly avoided having to face an impeachment vote on the House floor this week, with a motion to send the articles of impeachment introduced by Republican Thomas Massie passing by a 211-204 vote on Tuesday.
The procedural measure passed in large part because 11 House Democrats weren’t in DC on Tuesday for the vote.
Donald Trump is claiming exoneration, but all this really does is kick the can down the road to January, when Democrats take the majority in the House and the Senate.
First report: Tuesday, 3:56 p.m. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, trying to head off an impeachment effort in the lame-duck U.S. House, insisted on Tuesday that “every one” of the military missions under his watch now under scrutiny “was a lawful operation ordered by the commander-in-chief,” which critics are saying comes across as the Nuremberg defense.
“History is clear and very straight-forward. And one disgruntled congressman want to shred it over policy disagreements. That’s what it is, policy disagreements. Not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not offenses founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause,” Hegseth said Tuesday at the Pentagon, at something that you can’t really call a press conference – since the press was only allowed to sit and watch; that makes it more political theater.
U.S Sen. Ted Cruz, the last Republican standing in the former MAGA stronghold of Texas, feels a House impeachment is inevitable – and that if it happens as expected, Hegseth would survive a trial in the U.S. Senate, as Donald Trump did, twice.
To hear Cruz tell it, though, that might not be the best thing for the Trump administration.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Hegseth is still in office, if they impeach him again come January, so that (Chuck) Schumer would be in charge of the trial. And I expect, if Schumer has the option of conducting a trial, I would anticipate that he would conduct an extended trial, that he would spend real time, weeks if not months, using the trial to prosecute, number one, their opposition to the Iran War,” Cruz said on his podcast.
Sounds like Cruz would like Hegseth to fall on his sword, which we know won’t happen.
Mark Warner, who is in line to take over again as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee when Democrats take over the Senate in a few weeks, said in a statement on Tuesday that he will be watching to “see how many of the House Republican members will have found their spine, or are going to continue to, like lemmings, follow Trump over the cliff.”
“I think we all have known this guy was way over his skis. He has, frankly, not served our military well. He did not have the original competency. That has all been proven out over the past couple of years,” Warner said.
To the point that Warner made about lemmings in the House MAGA caucus, don’t expect either Ben Cline or John McGuire to deviate from the path of following Trump over the cliff.
Neither has offered any insight publicly into the pending matter with Hegseth, though both did take time to issue congratulations to Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, who was elected today to be the House Minority Leader come the first week of January.
“Jim has a solid history of standing up for conservative values and will work hard as a team to ensure we earn back the trust of the American people and win back the majority,” McGuire said in a statement posted to his socials after the vote, in which he quoted Jordan saying “Democrats fight for big government, Republicans fight for big ideas that improve the quality life for all Americans.”
Americans, ahem, don’t agree there, which is why Republicans will head back to DC over the holidays with an 80-plus-seat Democratic majority running things.
Cline wrote in a statement to his socials:
“I look forward to working alongside (Jordan) in the next Congress as we stand up for hard-working Americans, push back against radical Left policies, and fight for a brighter future for our Nation.”
I hope folks in the Fifth and Sixth realize the mistakes they made sending what AI spits out when you query MAGA congressman bobblehead to represent them in Congress.
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Chris Graham
