Hegseth made false claim to Congress that Biden deployed troops to polling places in 2024

In sworn testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on April 29, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that under the Biden administration "troops were deployed to polling locations in 15 states" during the 2024 election. He repeated the same assertion the following day to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The statement arose during questioning about whether the military could be used at polling places in the 2026 midterms, which sharpened its significance as a matter of congressional oversight.

The claim is false. A CNN review, backed by responses from the affected states, established that the roughly 250 National Guard personnel active across 15 states on Election Day 2024 were activated by individual state governors rather than the President, and were assigned to election cybersecurity and logistical support roles — not posted at polling sites. State officials were explicit: Arizona said it "did not deploy National Guardsmen to polling locations in 2024," and Oregon, a vote-by-mail state, called the notion that its Guard was activated at polling locations "simply false."

What is recorded here is the false testimony itself. The identical claim, made under oath to two congressional committees on consecutive days, undercuts an inadvertent-misstatement reading and maps to lying to Congress under the separation-of-powers ideal. The subject matter also touches on free-and-fair-elections concerns, but the recorded abuse is the knowingly false statement to congressional oversight bodies.