Massie tells RS why he went after Hegseth and not Trump

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) tells Responsible Statecraft that he is initiating eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth because Congress has “exhausted every other remedy to make things right.”

After a speech on the floor Tuesday, Massie said is forcing a vote on the articles in the House, which would likely happen on Thursday before the chamber recesses for the midterms.

The resolution is quite a brief against Hegseth, covering U.S. military actions in Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela, as well as accusing Hegseth of minimizing civilian deaths and abridging freedom of speech. Impeachment votes are privileged in the House, which means the measure can bypass the rules and go straight to a floor vote after debate. The articles would have to get a motion, however, which would require a majority vote.

It is not clear how many Democrats would vote for it. Democrats just killed a resolution to impeach President Donald Trump by one of their own , Rep. Al Green (D-Texas).

We spoke to Massie on Tuesday.

Responsible Statecraft : Why are you bringing this about right now?

Rep. Thomas Massie : Because we have exhausted every other legislative remedy to make things right. We are at the point now where Hegseth is just ignoring the law. He's ignored the concurrent (War Powers) resolution. He ignored the 60-day limit. They never reached the threshold required under section 2-C under the War Powers resolution of 1973. He's severely degraded the DoD's ability to winnow out civilian targets from their target list.

There is an active and ongoing war that should be stopped immediately, and I think this is an effective way to do it. It's literally the only legislative remedy that I could think of that might work.

RS : I would imagine the timing is important because the House is leaving until after the midterm elections in November.

Massie : Yeah, and the Speaker has to schedule a vote within 48 hours.

I suspect there will be a motion to table; that's usually what these resolve to, if they're not supported.

RS : So what happens then?

Massie : Well, I would encourage people who are even unsure about the bill to vote against the motion to table, and hear the debate.

RS : Let’s get back to the merits of the case here. This is pretty wide-ranging, so you hit the constitutionality of the war, the civilian deaths, the kidnapping of (former Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro, the airstrikes on so-called narco boats, even your freedom of speech where Senator Mark Kelly is concerned . You're really going at him with both barrels here.

Massie : There's two categories of articles here. One category, which covers six of the articles, is that he basically followed illegal orders from the president. And these are illegal orders that were issued by the president, but Hegseth is under obligation not to follow them since they were illegal. And there's a category of impeachment articles here that are solely attributable to Hegseth himself where he degraded the infrastructure of the DoD which is supposed to minimize the civilian casualties . That's his. I don't think Trump was involved in that. And then the attack on Mark Kelly, where he weaponized the DoD to squelch the speech of a senator and a veteran. That's solely Secretary Hegseth's doing. So there are things in here which are top-level issues with the administration all the way to Trump, but then there are some that are uniquely Peter Hegseth’s high crimes or misdemeanors.

Peter Hegseth wins the award for most crimes committed. And he just committed one too many; I couldn't take it anymore.

RS : That begs a question, why didn't you just go after Trump?

Massie : Well, I kind of already answered that question. Some of these things, like the civilian targeting, are Hegseth’s alone, and some of it, Trump would probably ascribe to Hegseth and not himself to save his own skin. I just don't think it's politically feasible or viable or even advisable to try to impeach Trump.

RS : A reporter just asked newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche about your articles of impeachment and you. Aside from him saying he thinks Hegseth is doing “a phenomenal job,” he said he disagreed with the characterization that we are in a war, and that a majority of Congress would disagree as well. What do you make of these continuing assertions by the White House, the administration, even members of Congress, that we can't call it a war?

Massie: Well, somebody better give the president that memo. He calls it a war every week.

It's beyond playing with semantics. It's beyond trying to be cute legally. There's no way you can say this is not a war.

Even the raid in Venezuela was an act of war. We overturned the government and put boots on the ground. But at least it seems to be over with now that we have their oil and control of their government.

He's wrong about a majority of Congress not thinking it's a war. A majority of Congress passed a concurrent resolution in the House and in the Senate telling them to stop under the War Powers Act.

So with semantics or not, they've been told to stop. They've claimed to stop the war by day 60, and now they say that every time they strike Iran it’s an unconnected military action to the others.

If you want a little something in the weeds here, I read every communication from the White House to Congress. They are sending us notices every time they do a strike pursuant to the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Now they're obligated to do that, and I noticed at least three of these they said were motivated by a strike on a neutrally-flagged vessel. They're claiming the authority to engage in hostilities on behalf of neutrally flagged vessels. And the War Powers Resolution says that it has to be an attack on U.S. soil or soldiers or infrastructure. They're admitting right there in three of these communications to Congress that their predicate was an attack on something that wasn't American.

RS : Did those (War Powers) communications end when they declared the so-called ceasefire, or do they keep coming?

Massie : They keep coming. In fact they refer to the ceasefire in two of these communications after the ceasefire.

RS : That flies in the face of what they're saying publicly

Massie : Yeah, if it's not a war, how is Trump gonna end it after the election like he told everybody in Texas last week?