It’s been one week since Election Day, and Pete Hegseth is facing a different kind of war. Trump administration officials tell Inner Loop they knew the defense secretary would face a slew of investigations in the next Congress. Now, they think he is on track to be Democrats’ number one target—and Democrats are already planning to make their case as airtight as possible.
“Hegseth is now a passenger in whatever comes next,” says one source close to President Donald Trump. “And all the outcomes are potentially damaging.”
House Democratic aides tell Inner Loop that Democrats are likely to pursue an impeachment inquiry against Hegseth, and also work to narrow the charges against him to issues that Senate Republicans have also complained about, in an effort to attract their support.
Hegseth, who has championed the deeply unpopular and costly Iran war, has spent much of his controversial tenure upending various internal processes at the Defense Department, including firing generals and blocking promotions using criteria that disproportionately affected women and people of color. He has also become known for his notorious role in Signalgate and for military strikes against purported drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean.
Some of those topics have also previously been the subject of complaints from Republicans. The Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker criticized Hegseth for the flag officer cuts and once reportedly threatened to block a Trump nominee unless the Pentagon handed over documents.
Last night, House Republicans managed to table an impeachment effort targeting Hegseth that was brought about by Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky. Massie, among other issues, accused Hegseth of waging the Iran war without approval from Congress and directing “extrajudicial killings.” But even though the effort failed, officials privately believe it is practically inevitable that Hegseth will be impeached again and face a Senate trial next year.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested as much after the impeachment failed to progress, telling reporters he would consult with his top members on next steps.
“We’ll have that conversation at the appropriate time, and that’ll be led by Adam Smith, soon to be chair of the Armed Services Committee, and Jamie Raskin, next chair of the judiciary,” Jeffries said.
Trump officials tell Inner Loop they still don’t expect Democrats to get enough GOP support to remove Hegseth—but they can’t shield him from wall-to-wall coverage of a trial.
The impeachment articles brought by Massie were seen by some Republicans as overly broad, which made officials think they could spare Hegseth an impeachment trial by having Senate majority leader John Thune dismiss all the charges in a straight-line vote.
But with Democrats taking over the Senate next year, that option is off the table.
It’s not going to be entirely simple, however. Hegseth’s biggest Republican detractors are all leaving Congress at the end of the year. Maine senator Susan Collins, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, and Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy all lost reelection this midterm cycle, while Iowa senator Joni Ernst and Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell are stepping down after finishing their terms.
But even with his biggest detractors set to retire, at least five other Republican senators have complained about Hegseth’s performance—getting Democrats closer to the 67 votes needed to convict—like Wicker, South Dakota senator Mike Rounds, Kentucky senator Rand Paul, Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, and Indiana senator Todd Young.
This is why the focus of the Democratic impeachment inquiry is going to have to be specific, and geared to Republican interests, so as to be unassailable.
Hegseth, for what it’s worth, doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere without a fight. In a televised appearance at the Pentagon earlier this week, Hegseth responded to a question about Vice President JD Vance blaming the Republican midterm losses on Iran, and said Vance was a “critical member of the team” and the war effort.
Hegseth then added, “I agree with what the president said, when he said ‘Hey, if I had to do this all over again, would we do it again? Absolutely.’”
Tech (Heart) Troubles
House Republicans are poised to open an investigation into Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's interactions with alleged Chinese spy and one-time tech executive Alice Huang, who is not related to the CEO.
The growing push for Congress to stand up its own investigation is set to put Republicans on a collision course with Trump, who has continued to publicly defend the CEO of the world's most valuable chip company.
During a congressional “Gang of Eight” briefing on Monday, officials including director of national intelligence Jay Clayton and CIA director John Ratcliffe gave only the broad brushstrokes of the classified intelligence surrounding Huang’s interactions, which left lawmakers deeply unsatisfied, sources say.
Meeting attendees did not get clear answers as to why there was no defensive briefing provided to Jensen Huang and whether he was initially left off Trump's trip to China this year as a result of the possible national security risk.
On Tuesday, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brian Mast, told reporters he would be open to issuing a subpoena to compel Jensen Huang to provide a briefing behind closed doors if he ignored a request from last week to appear on Capitol Hill.
Mast, together with Rick Crawford, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and John Moolenaar, the chair of the China select subcommittee, had asked Jensen Huang to appear before the three panels later this month.
The congressional inquiry follows revelations from The New York Times that secretary of state Marco Rubio drafted a memo for Trump warning that classified intelligence suggested Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, had been recruited to spy by China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security. China has denied any espionage allegations.
This is an edition of Hugo Lowell’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
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