Experts explain who could face impeachment calls after GOP midterm losses
Questions are mounting over whether anyone in President Donald Trump's administration could face impeachment after Republicans suffered heavy losses in the midterm elections.
Nicholas Higgins, associate professor and chair of the Political Science Department at North Greenville University, told UNILAD he expects Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to come under the spotlight, and believes he could be 'offered as a scapegoat' for both the election results and the war in Iran.
"I have a feeling the Trump administration will remove Hegseth before impeachment actually occurs," he said.
Higgins pointed to 2018 as a precedent, saying Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and chief of staff John Kelly all announced their resignations within about a month of that year's midterms.
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"Trump also tends to try and blame those who left, moving responsibility from himself to them," he added.
Donald Nieman, professor of history at Binghamton University, State University of New York, also singled out Hegseth in his assessment for UNILAD.
"Hegseth is an attractive target because of the Iran War, his flagrant disregard for Congress, and his incompetence," he claimed.
Why Pete Hegseth?
CNN reports that the push to pin blame on Hegseth is already underway inside the Republican Party.
Several Republicans told the network, on condition of anonymity, that he allegedly painted an overly optimistic picture of how quickly the war could be won, and kept pushing for escalation even though there was little sign the bombing was bringing Iran closer to surrender. Trump has so far stood by his defense secretary.
Pressed on his job status on Wednesday, the president denied any plans to fire him and said he was 'doing a very good job', adding of the war: "If I had it to do again, I'd have to do it again."
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has said he intends to force a House vote on impeaching Hegseth as soon as Congress returns next week, and several GOP sources told CNN they expect it to pass.
Has a Cabinet member ever been impeached?
Nieman said history shows how rarely the process ends in a conviction.
Only two Cabinet members have ever been impeached, he said: William Belknap, Ulysses S. Grant's secretary of war, and Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden's homeland security secretary.
Belknap was impeached in 1876 over accepting bribes from contractors at Army posts in the West and, despite strong evidence, the Senate acquitted him.
Nieman noted that convincing 'two-thirds of a political body like the Senate to convict is usually impossible'.
Mayorkas' impeachment in 2024, which Nieman described as a 'political show trial', also ended without a conviction.
Nieman does not expect Democrats to take up impeachment themselves.
"They learned from 2024 that if you don't do what voters sent you to D.C. to do, you'll be punished," he said. "Impeachment is a distraction from that, and they know it."
Higgins expects articles of impeachment to be drawn up within a week or two of the new Congress being sworn in on January 3, if Hegseth has not already resigned.
UNILAD has approached the White House and the Pentagon for comment.
Topics: Politics, US News, Donald Trump
Thomas Bamford
