Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie is standing firmly behind his assertion that House leadership cut the legislative session short specifically to avoid a vote on his impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Massie, a libertarian-leaning congressman who lost his primary in May to Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Tuesday, accusing the Defense Secretary of violating his “oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The impeachment articles cited Hegseth’s handling of the Iran war and military operations targeting alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Massie made his impeachment resolution privileged, a procedural move that would have forced lawmakers to vote on it within two legislative days.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sent lawmakers home a day early for a seven-week recess before that vote could take place, a decision Massie says was no coincidence.
Speaking on CNN’s “The Source” with host Kaitlan Collins, Massie said the timing told him everything he needed to know about where Republican support for Hegseth actually stood.
“The fact that they didn’t vote on it tells me that they did a whip check, and they probably found that there were some other Republicans, besides me, that were going to vote for this, or at least didn’t want to be on the record supporting Hegseth,” Massie told Collins.
When Collins pressed him directly on whether his impeachment effort was the reason the House went into early recess, Massie left no room for ambiguity in his answer.
“I know it was,” he told Collins, adding that Johnson had multiple opportunities to schedule the vote before adjourning, both immediately after the articles were introduced and again before the chamber adjourned.
Massie pointed out that Johnson could have held the vote the same evening the articles were introduced, or at any point the following day, arguing the deliberate avoidance of a floor vote revealed the true political calculation being made by House Republican leadership.
The outgoing congressman, who has long been a vocal critic of President Trump, is set to leave office after his primary defeat, making this impeachment push one of his final major legislative actions before departing Congress.
The episode has drawn attention to potential fractures within the House Republican caucus over Hegseth, suggesting that opposition to the Defense Secretary may run deeper than Republican leadership has been willing to publicly acknowledge.
