WASHINGTON – Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Thursday ripped his Republican colleagues for using a sneaky procedural maneuver to block his effort to force an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal, a third-party messaging app, for sharing classified war plans with intelligence officials, his wife, his brother and others.

Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, recently filed a resolution of inquiry directing the Trump administration to turn over all communications related to Hegseth last month discussing an impending military attack on Yemen in a Signal group chat with top intelligence officials, and separately, with members of his family.

Any member of Congress can file a resolution of inquiry; it’s a tool that lawmakers have for obtaining information from the executive branch. When someone files a resolution of inquiry on a given subject, the committee with jurisdiction over it has 14 days to act on it. If the committee doesn’t act, anyone can bring it up on the House floor and force a vote on it.

Smith’s resolution of inquiry never got a vote in the House Armed Services Committee. That meant it was on track to ripen, essentially, by the end of next week, at which point Democrats could force a vote on it.

But late Monday, during a House Rules Committee hearing, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) slipped language into an unrelated resolution that set up the rules for debating five bills on the House floor on Tuesday. Buried in these rules was this provision: “Provides that each day during the period from April 29, 2025, through September 30, 2025, shall not constitute a legislative day for purposes of clause 7 of rule XIII (Resolutions of Inquiry).”

Translated into everyday language, this provision prevents House members from forcing a vote on any resolution of inquiry until October. When the House voted Tuesday to pass the rules for debating those five bills, they also killed Smith’s effort.

Every Democrat voted against passing the rules.

Smith fumed Thursday about Republicans providing cover for Hegseth, whose use of Signal for sharing classified information wasn’t just a stunning breach of national security; a journalist was also mistakenly let into the group chat with top U.S. intelligence officials.

“President Trump’s national security team risked the lives of U.S. service members and compromising the mission when they shared sensitive U.S. military plans ahead of operations against the Houthis in Yemen,” he told HuffPost in a statement.

“Monday’s Rules vote to block the Resolution of Inquiry I led to get answers so that we could help ensure such a security breach never happens again is a blatant partisan ploy to cover up the incompetence revealed by that failure,” said Smith. “That incompetence has been underscored by Defense Secretary Hegseth refusing to acknowledge obvious operational security errors or correct course. The impact of that whitewashing threatens to inflict further damage to our national security.”

A spokesperson for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.