Republican congressman French Hill has declined to say whether he would support an impeachment push against US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying lawmakers should first consider whether disciplinary action would be more appropriate.
Mr Hill, an Arkansas Republican, said he wanted to hear the debate before deciding whether Mr Hegseth had committed an impeachable offence or whether the president should take action over his performance at the Pentagon.
“I want to hear the debate on it to see if it merits impeachment versus some other disciplinary action or action by the president if he’s not getting the job done in leading the Department of War,” Mr Hill said.
Mr Hegseth is expected to face heightened scrutiny when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week. Anger over the handling of the war in Iran came to the fore after the midterm elections, in which Republicans suffered heavy losses as voters cited the conflict and its effect on the cost of living.
Before lawmakers left Washington to campaign, Republican representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced articles of impeachment against Mr Hegseth. Mr Massie has said he intends to continue pressing for a vote this week.
Mr Hill said he was not satisfied with the way the war had been handled, but argued that responsibility for its strategy rested with the president as commander-in-chief.
“The commander in chief has to take the responsibility for the strategy of conducting the war and how it’s been conducted,” he said.
Mr Hill also said the United States remained opposed to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. “There’s nobody in America that wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “This has been a goal of the United States for five decades.”
Hill separates performance from impeachment
Asked directly whether Mr Hegseth should be impeached, Mr Hill said the immediate question was whether the president believed he should remain as Defence Secretary.
He drew a distinction between poor job performance and conduct meeting the constitutional threshold for impeachment, which is based on “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”.
“If you don’t think he’s done a good job conducting his job, that doesn’t mean per se that he’s committed an impeachable offense,” Mr Hill said.
He added that if Mr Hegseth was not carrying out his mission properly, “then the president ought to make a change there”.
“The question is: Are we leading at the Pentagon in the right way or not the right way?” Mr Hill said. “That’s very separate from whether or not somebody’s committed an impeachable offense.”
