The Rush to Judgment on Hegseth

The articles of impeachment that Congressman Thomas Massie wants the House to hand up in respect of Secretary of War Hegseth strike us as shocking. That starts with the first measure. It, according to NBC’s report, accuses Secretary Hegseth of “waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat.” Is Mr. Hegseth the only one in the chain of command in that conflict?We understand that Mr. Massie’s missive is unlikely, at the end of the day, to be the only impeachment package laid before the House. Another impeachment resolution pending in the House has been filed by Congressman Shri Thanedar of Michigan. His articles accuse Mr. Hegseth of no less than murder, relating to what he calls “a campaign of lethal strikes and extrajudicial killings against small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.”Mr. Thanedar, too, would charge the war secretary with “reckless and unlawful mishandling of classified information.” The renewed focus on these impeachment resolutions, both of which predate the midterm elections, follows the comments by the likely new House Speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, that he was a “hard yes” regarding these efforts to pursue Mr. Hegseth. This despite campaign rhetoric about focusing on the Democrats’ so-called affordability agenda.Mr. Hegseth, in Mr. Jeffries’s telling, “has abused his power, undermined our national security and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran.” He concluded that “Pete Hegseth has got to go.” The charges emerging so far against Mr. Hegseth may appear incendiary at first glance. A closer look suggests that they reflect the opposition party’s dissatisfaction with the policy decisions of the Trump administration, and the president himself.This basis for an impeachment drive would seem to vindicate a concern motivated by the Framers during the Constitutional Convention when the House was given the power of impeachment in the first place. In an early draft of the parchment, only “treason and bribery” were cited as grounds to impeach. George Mason of Virginia sought to expand the potential basis for impeachment to encompass what he called “maladministration.”Yet Madison warned that Mason’s standard was “so vague” that it would lead federal officers to serve at the “pleasure of the Senate.” The term “maladministration” was replaced by “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” In 65 Federalist Hamilton asserted that this standard implied “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Mr. Jeffries could be paying lip service to this ideal.As impeachable offenses go, though, the bases for a de facto indictment mooted by Messrs. Massie, Thanedar, and Jeffries highlight the risk of the House presuming prosecutorial power for score-settling and lawfare. Hamilton by contrast stressed that impeachable offenses “relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” Democratic dissatisfaction with Mr. Hegseth’s, or Mr. Trump’s, management does not clear Hamilton’s bar.We carry no brief for Mr. Hegseth. For what we do carry a brief, though, is due process. In any event, the war secretary’s best defense against impeachment could prove to be the Senate, in which a vote of two-thirds would be required to convict on the charges handed up by the House. Our own estimate on the charges, at least based on what has emerged so far, would be that an acquittal of Mr. Hegseth is in order.

The Rush to Judgment on Hegseth

The Rush to Judgment on Hegseth

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