U.S. Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, said on Monday that “Pete Hegseth is incompetent and a threat to our national security,” a day after he told CBS News that removing the defense secretary would be his top priority if Democrats win the House. He made that pledge when asked about a U.S. intelligence warning that Iran had stepped up plotting against American personnel.
“Pete Hegseth is incompetent and a threat to our national security. He needs to go,” Crow wrote in a post on X on Monday afternoon. The post linked to a Washington Examiner article published on Sunday about his television interview. The post did not include video.
Crow made the remarks on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. Moderator Margaret Brennan asked him about a memo from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton saying Iran had “substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel,” according to the CBS interview.
“Well, Iran remains a danger. Pete Hegseth remains incompetent and is not doing what’s necessary to protect our service members, which is why he’s my priority number one if we retake the majority, to make sure we oust him from the Pentagon,” Crow said, “because our service members actually deserve competent, serious, real leadership that will protect them and do the right thing. And they currently don’t have that.”
The memo Brennan cited was a one-page, unclassified Oct. 23 assessment that Clayton sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Axios first reported. “Through various channels, we have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel,” the memo said, according to the text published by Politico. “The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries,” it said, according to CBS News, which also obtained the memo. CBS reported that the memo did not name specific targets and that CIA Director John Ratcliffe was copied. Axios and CBS reported that the State Department had ordered non-essential personnel and family members to leave U.S. diplomatic posts in Saudi Arabia; the State Department’s travel advisory page could not be accessed to confirm the order. At a campaign rally at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers on Friday, Trump suggested the United States could launch another operation against Iran. “We may do another little Epic Fury, or they’ll agree,” he said, according to C-SPAN’s video of the event and an NBC News live blog. Epic Fury is the name of the U.S. military campaign against Iran launched in February.
In the same interview, Crow tied the Iran threat to the administration’s dealings with Moscow. He called Russia “the primary supporter of Iran, who is providing intelligence and helping supply and provide targeting to Iran to kill Americans.” He said that “in the last two weeks you had Steve Witkoff go and sit across from Vladimir Putin and call him a humanitarian, and Donald Trump lifted and eased sanctions to provide tens of billions of dollars to the Russian war machine to try to kill Americans.”
Envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in St. Petersburg on Oct. 21 after the release of American Stephen Hubbard. “You are a humanitarian also, sir,” Witkoff told Putin, according to a Kremlin transcript of the meeting. Trump’s Oct. 16 executive order waived most sanctions and duties under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. On Oct. 9, the Treasury Department authorized transactions in Russian-origin diesel under General License 135. No official estimate supporting Crow’s “tens of billions of dollars” figure could be found.
The Washington Post first reported on March 6, citing three unnamed officials familiar with the intelligence, that Russia was providing Iran with targeting information including the locations of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East. CNN reported similar findings the same day, also citing unnamed sources. Four days later, Witkoff told CNBC’s “Money Movers” that “on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing. That’s what they said. So, we can take them at their word,” according to the CNBC interview transcript. Crow sits on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, according to his official House biography. He did not cite a source for his claim that Russian targeting help is ongoing.
Crow also discussed the slowdown of Starshield, SpaceX’s military satellite service, for Ukrainian forces. He said he had written to Trump about it with Representatives Adam Smith of the Armed Services Committee and Jim Himes of the Intelligence Committee. The Oct. 16 letter, also signed by Representative George Whitesides, asked who authorized the speed restrictions and requested answers by Oct. 30. “It cannot and should not be the case that a tech oligarch, a private citizen, who has that much control over our national security, who is unaccountable, who is unelected, with zero transparency, is making life and death decisions on the battlefield,” Crow said.
Crow is also a recruitment co-chair for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. His comments add to a growing Democratic campaign against Hegseth ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, told Roll Call on Monday that he would force a House vote on impeaching Hegseth soon after lawmakers return the week of Nov. 9. Massie said, “I give it better than a 50 percent chance of passing.” Roll Call also quoted Crow’s CBS remarks. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed at a campaign event on Saturday to “run Pete Hegseth out of town,” MS NOW reported.
Also on Monday, before Crow’s post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had “been waiting for nearly a month for Mr. Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS,” in a post on X. Crow did not mention Zelenskyy’s comments.
The Pentagon has defended Hegseth against earlier Democratic calls for his removal. “Secretary Hegseth has slashed bureaucracy, unleashed innovation, and delivered for our warfighters every step of the way,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement to Semafor on Oct. 9.
Crow’s descriptions of Hegseth as “incompetent” and “a threat to our national security” are his own characterizations. He did not point to a specific failure by Hegseth to respond to the Iranian threat described in Clayton’s memo. On the record, the memo warns that Iranian plotting has reached “advanced stages” without naming targets, Witkoff did call Putin “a humanitarian,” and the administration has eased some Russia sanctions. Crow’s claims about ongoing Russian targeting help for Iran and “tens of billions of dollars” for Moscow could not be independently verified. As of Monday, Hegseth, the Pentagon and the White House had not responded publicly to Crow’s post or his CBS remarks.