Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s pending impeachment would make him the third U.S. Cabinet official to be impeached in the nation’s history, though the distance between the first and second was nearly 150 years.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday and forced a vote within two days, on charges ranging from the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to his handling of the war with Iran. The first Cabinet impeachment was of Secretary of War William Belknap, in 1876, who served under President Ulysses S. Grant. The second was Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024, who served under former President Joe Biden.
Neither case ended in conviction — if Hegseth is convicted, he would be the first.
William Belknap
Belknap served with distinction under Grant during the Civil War and was appointed secretary of war on the advice of William T. Sherman, then head of the Army. Belknap came under scrutiny for corruption charges considered excessive even by the standards of the corruption-ridden Grant administration.
The accusations reached their height during the trader post scandal, in which Belknap was found to be taking generous kickbacks from appointees to trader posts on the western frontier. These trading hubs were located at military outposts that traded with local Native Americans. Suspicion was first leveled against him when questions arose about how he could pay for frequent, luxurious Washington, D.C., parties on his Cabinet salary.
The House decried Belknap as “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.”
In his trial in the Senate, a majority voted against him, though they failed to reach the necessary two-thirds majority. Though he was acquitted over this failure, Belknap had already tearfully submitted his resignation to Grant.
Belknap’s policy of pushing for the sale of state-of-the-art repeating firearms to Native Americans while issuing faulty breech-loading rifles to military garrisons in the West to maximize profits would contribute heavily to the defeat and massacre of the 7th Cavalry Regiment under Gen. George Custer in the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn, according to historian John Koster. Belknap had resigned from his office shortly before the debacle, saving himself from punishment.
Alejandro Mayorkas
Mayorkas’s case was different from Belknap’s, as he was not accused of corruption, but dereliction of duty.
Mayorkas became the face of one of the most unpopular aspects of Biden’s administration: the White House’s handling of immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. Almost as soon as Trump left office for the first time, the border was swarmed by millions of people hoping to take advantage of the Biden administration’s liberal immigration policy. Border states were quickly overwhelmed, and the flood triggered a humanitarian crisis. Biden and Mayorkas’s refusal to clamp down on the border in response led to an upsurge of Republican outrage, and by January 2024, House GOP leadership sought to punish Mayorkas for the situation.
The first impeachment initiative was filed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in November 2023, which cleared a House vote and was sent to committee. Committee hearings were held in January, but Mayorkas refused to testify. After much wrangling, a second House floor vote passed narrowly on Feb. 13, sending his case to the Senate for impeachment proceedings.
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The vote gave Mayorkas a new distinction: He was the first sitting Cabinet official to be impeached, as Belknap had resigned before he could be impeached while a sitting Cabinet member.
Proceedings lasted just three hours when the measure came before the Senate in April, when Democrats voted that each article was unconstitutional as it didn’t allege a high crime or misdemeanor. With Democrats holding a majority in the Senate, the effort was quickly killed, and the court of impeachment was adjourned 51-49, all along party lines.