Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said on Tuesday that there was something “quite ironic” about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s statement earlier that morning, in which President Donald Trump’s embattled Pentagon chief insisted he had acted only under the orders of his commander in chief. Speaking with CNN’s Dana Bash, Kelly suggested that had Hegseth — who now faces calls for impeachment from within his own party — taken Kelly’s advice, things might have turned out very differently for him.

Kelly’s CNN appearance came the morning after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth in the House. According to Massie, the defense secretary committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” including illegally launching the war with Iran and killing hundreds of civilians in boat strikes against alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean (Politico). No Cabinet secretary has ever been removed by impeachment — the only one ever impeached, War Secretary William Belknap, resigned in 1876 before a Senate trial that nonetheless fell short of the two-thirds vote needed to convict. “Many of those articles, I think six out of the eight, are about him following illegal orders,” Kelly noted. “Which I find quite ironic. If Pete Hegseth would have just watched our video, listened to what we had to say, and maybe internalized it a little bit, he wouldn’t find himself in this situation.”

The senator was referring to a video released early in Trump’s second term by Kelly and other lawmakers who had served in the U.S. armed forces, which called on military service members to refuse illegal orders. At the time, Hegseth accused Kelly — a retired Navy captain and former astronaut — of sedition, while Trump suggested he could be put to death. Under Hegseth’s direction, the Pentagon initiated a process to retroactively reduce Kelly’s rank and retirement pension, an effort that was blocked by a federal judge in February. Hegseth vowed to appeal, but the matter later faded from the spotlight.

Hegseth now finds himself under fire, with support for his impeachment growing from within the GOP — though whether additional Republicans rally behind Massie’s articles remains to be seen. On Tuesday morning, he delivered the first Pentagon press briefing in six months, offering a rambling defense of what he characterized as his “military success” — including in Iran — and asserting that every operation was “ordered by the commander in chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress,” as he told reporters (BBC News live coverage). As many observers noted, his comments repeatedly sought to shift responsibility from himself to the president, echoing the old “just following orders” refrain. Since the post–World War II Nuremberg era, U.S. military law has required service members to refuse manifestly unlawful orders.

On CNN, Kelly was pressed on whether Hegseth’s claims that he had notified Congress about the various conflicts were true. “I’m on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee -- I was not notified,” Kelly said, adding that he was “confident” no other ranking member had been notified either. Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the executive branch is directed to consult with Congress “in every possible instance” before U.S. armed forces are introduced into hostilities.

The senator did not hold back in his assessment of the defense secretary’s leadership. “Pete Hegseth has been a disaster as secretary of defense. He has botched this war in Iran, a war we should have never gotten into. He’s firing senior admirals and generals who are valuable members of the department, because, as we found out just the other day, he didn’t like it that they attended a conference or said something about vaccines,” Kelly said. As he intimated, new reporting has shown that Hegseth has barred the promotion of career senior officers based on factors such as race, gender, and political views (The Independent). “At every turn, this secretary of defense has just been a disaster,” Kelly declared. “I think he needs to go.”

Related posts on X: Paul McLeary (link), David Pakman (link).