Rep. Jonathan Jackson told TMZ he "can't wait" to impeach War Secretary Pete Hegseth. Then, when the vote actually happened Tuesday evening, Jackson wasn't there.
That's not the story. The story is what he said next.
Jackson, the Illinois Democrat, posted on X that "a traffic incident and a police-escorted bus caused a delay" that prevented him from casting his vote. A traffic jam. A bus. Forces beyond his control. Very unfortunate.
Then TMZ's Charlie Cotton tracked him down. Jackson's story started shifting immediately. "I missed the vote. There was a traffic jam... It's inexcusable," Jackson told Cotton. But Cotton had receipts. "But, you kind of did make the vote," Cotton pressed — indicating Jackson had been in the building with time to spare.
Jackson's response: "It was a mistake."
So we've gone from a traffic incident and a police-escorted bus to "it was a mistake" in the span of one follow-up question. That's not a clarification. That's a cover story collapsing in real time.
It got worse. Jackson went on Don Lemon's show and offered version three: "I walked over — ran over — got up to the foot of the stairs, and simply missed the vote." He ran. He got to the stairs. He simply missed it. No traffic jam in this version. No police-escorted bus. Just a man who couldn't quite make it up a flight of stairs in time.
Cotton, the TMZ correspondent who actually did the journalism here, summarized it cleanly: "This traffic jam nonsense is nonsense."
The impeachment vote failed 211-204. Nearly a dozen House Democrats were absent. Jackson was one of them. As reported by Breitbart, the absences weren't random — Axios reporter Andrew Solender and Drop Site reporter Julian Andreone noted that eight of the absent Democrats had received support from Elect Democratic Women, the PAC co-founded by House Minority Whip Katherine Clark. EDW Action, the group's affiliated super PAC, has ties to AIPAC.
Other notable no-shows included Rep. Julia Brownley of California, Rep. Lou Correa of California, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, Rep. Laura Gillen of New York, Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan, Rep. Marilyn Strickland of Washington, and Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida.
The impeachment push was supposed to be the Democrats' principled stand against Pete Hegseth. The grand statement. The line in the sand. And when the roll was called, a dozen of them couldn't be bothered to show up — including the guy who told a camera crew days earlier that he couldn't wait for this exact moment.
Jackson gave three different explanations for the same absence in the span of 48 hours. Traffic jam, then a mistake, then he ran to the stairs but didn't make it. Each version contradicted the last. None of them held up to a single follow-up question from a TMZ reporter.
The vote was 211-204. Seven votes the other way and it would have been different. Jackson said he couldn't wait.