A Democrat who said the country could not wait another day to impeach Pete Hegseth is now being pressed over why he missed the vote when it arrived.

TMZ DC reporter Charlie Cotton says he saw Rep. Jonathan Jackson, D-Ill., on the Capitol steps only minutes before the House closed the vote. Jackson had blamed a traffic delay for keeping him from the chamber.

Cotton’s timeline says nothing conclusive about Jackson’s intent. It leaves an obvious question that Jackson did not fully answer on camera.

Watch the confrontation:

Cotton told Jackson that the vote was closing around 6:05 p.m. and that he had seen the congressman outside roughly ten minutes earlier. Jackson responded that there had been a traffic jam and called the missed vote inexcusable.

When Cotton pointed out that Jackson had apparently reached the building, the congressman acknowledged making a mistake. He repeated his support for removing Hegseth but said he could not offer more detail.

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TMZ reported that Jackson had been outside recording a social-media video with time remaining before the vote closed. Earlier that day, Jackson had told the outlet that impeachment could not wait until the next Congress.

The outlet’s reporting and Cotton’s eyewitness account are the heart of the controversy. They challenge whether traffic alone explains the missed vote, while stopping short of establishing that Jackson deliberately deceived anyone.

Cotton later posted his own account and raised an even broader question about the Democratic absences:

His post makes a provocative allegation, but the available footage does not prove that Democrats coordinated to sink the effort. What the public record does establish is that 11 Democrats were absent when the House voted.

The Office of the House Clerk records the final tally on House Resolution 1655 as 211-204 on a motion to refer the impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee.

The referral side consisted of 210 Republicans and one independent. A total of 203 Democrats and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie voted no.

The Clerk’s roll call lists 18 members as not voting: 11 Democrats and seven Republicans. Jackson was among the Democratic absences.

The motion passed by seven votes, so the 11 missing Democratic votes were enough to dominate the immediate fallout. The official record also shows that both parties had absent members, an important fact when weighing broader claims about why the vote ended as it did.

The House was not voting on whether to convict or remove Hegseth. It was deciding whether to send the eight articles to committee, a move that stopped an immediate floor showdown and left the resolution with little time to advance before the current Congress ends.

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ABC News reported that the vote remained open for 29 minutes and that lawmakers had known for at least 18 hours that a 5:30 p.m. vote series was scheduled. Several of the absent Democrats said a traffic incident and a police-escorted bus delayed them near the Capitol.

Jackson said the delay caused the vote to close before he and other members could reach the chamber. He later entered his intended “no” vote into the Congressional Record, but that statement does not change the official tally.

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ABC identified the other absent Democrats as Julia Brownley, Lou Correa, Laura Gillen, Steven Horsford, Nancy Pelosi, Brittany Pettersen, Melanie Stansbury, Haley Stevens, Marilyn Strickland and Frederica Wilson. Correa had announced a medical absence in advance, while Pelosi was in California for a Veterans Day event.

Six of the absent Democrats, including Jackson, arrived in the chamber for the next vote. ABC calculated that those six votes alone still would have left the referral motion ahead 211-210, while all 11 Democratic absences voting together could have changed the recorded result.

The exchange spread quickly because Cotton’s timeline appears difficult to square with a simple claim that traffic kept Jackson away from the Capitol:

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced the resolution. The 34-page text set out eight articles accusing Hegseth of misconduct connected to military operations, war-powers disputes and other Pentagon actions.

Those are Massie’s allegations, not findings by a court or the House. Hegseth rejected the impeachment drive, and the referral vote prevented the articles from advancing directly on the floor.

The most defensible conclusion from the TMZ footage is narrower than the viral “caught in a lie” framing. Jackson’s public traffic explanation and Cotton’s account of seeing him on the steps do not fit neatly together, and Jackson did not resolve that contradiction when given the chance.

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He called the missed vote a mistake. Now the unanswered part is why a lawmaker who said the matter could not wait apparently did not make the final walk into the chamber.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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