Pete Hegseth, the self-styled secretary of war, is facing articles of impeachment introduced by a member of his own party—on allegations including violating the US Constitution and directing the military to carry out illegal actions that led to mass civilian death. But in a press conference early Tuesday, the former Fox News host was defiant.

“This is not patriotism,” Hegseth said, in his first Pentagon news conference in over six months. “This is sabotage.”

He then spent half an hour defending his own record. He framed the wildly unpopular war on Iran as a victory (“History will judge the Iran war quite differently than the conventional wisdom right now”) and noted that during his tenure, not many Americans have died in war (“For perspective, we lost 60,000 Americans in Vietnam over 20 years; we lost 37,000 in Korea over just three years”). Pete Hegseth, according to Pete Hegseth, has been very good at his job.

“The media can never admit the military’s success, because they, you, hate the president more than they love our country and our troops,” he said to the assembled journalists, who were reportedly told before the briefing that if they “get out of line” they would be “removed physically.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, the libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican who is spearheading the impeachment push, said yesterday that his effort to remove Hegseth from office was intended to protect the rule of law. “We’re not indicting him for being bad at his job,” Massie told reporters. “In fact, he was very effective at killing schoolchildren in Iran. He was very effective at extrajudicial killings…The argument here is that he’s broken laws and he’s violated the Constitution.”

Massie’s eight articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of violating the Constitution; of extrajudicially killing “at least 221 persons aboard seagoing
vessels alleged to be smuggling narcotics in the Caribbean Sea and
the Eastern Pacific Ocean, principally in international waters”; and of military orders leading to the death or injury of “more than 200 civilians at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School” in Iran. A UN expert argued in September that US attacks against alleged drug boats may constitute crimes against humanity. A separate UN fact-finding mission that same month concluded that the school strike in Iran may have constituted a war crime.

Hegseth said Tuesday morning that “every one was a lawful operation.” Massie says Hegseth’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Now it will be up to Massie’s colleagues to decide who they believe.

This post was shared from Mother Jones.