Hegseth Could Be the Third Cabinet Secretary to be Impeached. What Happened to the Others?

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky filed eight articles of impeachment Monday, accusing Hegseth of violating the War Powers Resolution of 1973, citing the lack of congressional oversight on the Iran war which Massie argues was "unlawful from its inception." Another charge accuses Hegseth of "ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties." The charges also allege the "kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader," in reference to the U.S.' capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

Hegseth has dismissed the impeachment effort as a "political spectacle," referring to the resolutions put forward by Massie as a "farce" that "mock the Constitution." Addressing reporters during a press conference at the Pentagon Tuesday morning, Hegseth said that "Iran, the cartels, Maduro, Yemen, every one was a lawful operation ordered by the Commander in Chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress, and executed by American warriors who did their jobs."

While Hegseth has the support of President Donald Trump, who vowed to "stand by" him even if an impeachment vote is successful, the embattled Defense Secretary is facing mounting scrutiny elsewhere. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is among those to throw his weight behind the impeachment effort, which was initially filed in September, but was never voted on as the House went into recess.

It's unclear exactly how the current impeachment effort will affect the five-week lame-duck session, as government funding runs out after Dec. 11 and lawmakers still need to make a deal to avert a government shutdown. Even if the measure passes the House, it's unlikely to obtain the two-thirds majority needed to pass the current Senate, where Republicans still hold 53 out of 100 seats. Democrats will take control of both chambers in January. "If the Senate doesn't deal with this before the end of this Senate, they're turning it over to a Democrat Senate, who can then have the trials and deal with it," Massie told reporters Monday.

"If you wanted to draw an analogy to criminal law: an impeachment vote by the House of Representatives is like an indictment. It doesn't mean the person has been found guilty, but it means that the House thinks there's enough evidence of high crime or misdemeanor that there should be a trial," says Thomas Berry, director of the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

The House has initiated impeachment proceedings over 60 times, but only 22 cases, involving 21 people, have resulted in formal impeachment by the House. Trump was impeached twice by the House during his first term. He was accused of abusing the power of his office for domestic political advantage and obstructing Congress' abilities to hold him accountable in the first impeachment, while the second impeachment saw him accused of incitement of insurrection, in relation to the events of Jan. 6, 2021. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020 and February 2021.

Only two Cabinet secretaries have been impeached by the House in U.S. history—here's what to know about them, and what happened after the measures were brought forward.

William Belknap served under Republican President Ulysses S. Grant from 1869 to 1876 as Secretary of War, a predecessor to the modern-day Secretary of Defense. Although the Trump Administration has since revived the term, rebranding the "Department of Defense" to the "Department of War" last year.

"The Grant presidency was particularly corrupt. It was a situation where Grant himself was an honest man, a beloved war hero, turned two-term President," says Thomas Balcerski, a professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University. "Yet he had a flaw in his character in that he was too trusting of the men around him, many of whom were military figures from the Civil War."

Belknap was "accused of bribery, corruption, and taking kickbacks in exchange for essentially providing contracts," says Balcerski."These were basically kickback schemes. In the case of Belknap, he gave an exclusive contract, what we would call a 'no-bid contract' in our language today, specifically to trading posts in [modern day] Oklahoma."

While testifying in front of the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, a wheeler-dealer named Caleb Marsh, who alongside Belknap handpicked associates to operate the lucrative military trading post at Fort Sill in modern day Oklahoma, alleged that Belknap had received payments in exchange for the appointments. Estimates placed the amount between $20,000 and $40,000, equivalent to approximately $630,000 to $1.26 million today.

"The only real dispute was whether the Senate could do anything about it, because Belknap had actually resigned hours before the House impeached him," says Berry. "Much of the trial was not about whether he had been corrupt, but about whether the Senate could convict him, given the fact that he had already resigned."

Alejandro Mayorkas served as Secretary of Homeland Security under former President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025. He was impeached by House Republicans in 2024 over the Administration's handling of the southern border, as federal officials during the Biden Administration had been overwhelmed by a surge in migrant crossings.

Balcerski says that, compared with Belknap, "there wasn't a similar signature scandal" surrounding Mayorkas' impeachment. Instead, the case raised questions about the boundaries of impeachment and whether disagreements over how an official carries out government policy should constitute impeachable offenses.

"That was pushing the boundaries of what is an impeachable offense," argues Berry. "There has been much debate since the Constitution was ratified about what is a legitimately impeachable offense versus what is simply a disagreement in policy."

The Biden Administration at the time denounced the move as "baseless" and "unconstitutional." The DHS Office of the General Counsel also sent a 38-page response to the House Rules Committee, arguing that impeachment was being used to punish good-faith policy and enforcement decisions.

Some Republicans raised doubts over the proceedings, also. Rep. Tom McClintock of California said that although he believed Mayorkas was "guilty of maladministration" of immigration laws, he did not view the matter as grounds for impeachment.

"Many people thought that what Mayorkas had done did not rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. That it was simply a political disagreement. That he was choosing to enforce immigration law with different priorities than a Republican DHS Secretary would, but that this was not objectively criminal or illegal," says Berry.

"The impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas is much closer in form and content to the possible impeachment of Pete Hegseth than the impeachment of Belknap," says Balcerski. "The Mayorkas impeachment set a precedent, where impeachment became one of the tools of oversight of the Congress."

When questioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee on the eve of the 60-day mark of the war in April, Hegseth argued that as a temporary cease-fire had been reached, then any such clock for congressional approval would be paused—a position Senators contested.