US defence secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to give his first news conference from the Pentagon in six months on Tuesday, just a day after a Republican legislator launched an effort to impeach him over his handling of the unpopular war against Iran and other actions.
The briefing will be Mr Hegseth’s first since May even as the US military has kept up intermittent operations against Iran as well as fatal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America.
Mr Hegseth, who has said the news conference would focus on the impeachment threat, is gearing up for a fight, having launched a social media blitz and saying he is ready to defend his and US President Donald Trump’s actions from “politically motivated people”.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, filed the impeachment resolution in the House on Monday.
It sets the stage for a dramatic vote on whether to remove a prominent Trump administration figure following sweeping losses for Republicans in last week’s midterm elections that many at least partly blamed on the Iran conflict and its economic impact.
The resolution largely focuses on the war in Iran but also includes references to Mr Hegseth’s role in military actions in Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and Venezuela.
Mr Massie said Mr Hegseth’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanours” and his leadership at the Pentagon “warrants impeachment”.
A vote in the House could come by mid-week, putting pressure on Republicans — many of whom blamed their election wipeout on the Iran war — but next steps are highly uncertain.
Mr Trump has backed Mr Hegseth, pointing to the raid to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January as well as military operations against Iran that he asserts have “obliterated” its navy and air force.
Iran, however, has been able to keep striking US military bases in the Middle East and has disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the course of the more than eight-month-old conflict, driving up global oil prices.
Mr Trump told reporters Monday that the Iran war “militarily is effectively over” and repeated his often-made claim that Iran “would love to make a deal”.
Mr Hegseth also has been defending his stewardship of the US military.
“There’s a lot of politically motivated people who may have substantial policy disagreements, but their disagreements are with success,” he told reporters Monday after a speech at the Naval War College in Rhode Island.
He added that “if we want to litigate” the military actions that the Trump administration has taken, “I’m happy to do it all day long”.
He also released a video on social media last week that argued impeachment would be “all about the politics of personal destruction” and that “won’t work with me. You can rest assured of that”.
Afterward, scores of Pentagon political appointees posted images of Mr Hegseth emblazoned with the words, “Stand. Fight. Defend the Republic”.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, released a statement saying that “despite threats of sham witch hunts from Democrats”, Mr Hegseth is “100% committed to leading the Department until the end of President Trump’s term in office”.
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