He needs a bigger leak investigation.
Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Pete Hegseth’s greatest achievement of his first 100 days as defense secretary may be just surviving his first 100 days as defense secretary. After the former Fox News host was confirmed by a historically thin margin in the U.S. Senate (following allegations of rape, excessive drinking, and general incompetence), Hegseth has distinguished himself from his predecessors in a number of notably not-great ways. Last month, he accidentally leaked U.S. war plans against Houthi militants to Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg in an unsecured Signal group chat. Then he was outed for bringing his wife to sensitive meetings with foreign defense officials. His younger brother, Phil, somehow ended up with a big job at the Pentagon. Last week, the former Fox News host fired three top Pentagon officials amid a leak investigation into multiple damaging stories — including how Hegseth had invited China-entangled billionaire Elon Musk to be briefed about the U.S. war plans against China. On Friday, Politico reported that Hegseth’s chief of staff is leaving his role, too.
Now, the New York Times reports that Hegseth also shared those Houthi war plans in a second Signal group chat — which he himself created — with multiple other people including his wife, his brother, and his personal attorney, “according to four people with knowledge of the chat”:
Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.
Both Hegseth’s brother and the lawyer, Tim Parlatore, are Pentagon employees, but the Times notes “it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.” His wife, former Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth, doesn’t work at the Pentagon. And Hegseth can’t blame Mike Waltz this time:
Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat. …
Mr. Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said.
The second group chat also included Hegseth’s soon-to-be-former chief of staff, Joe Kasper, as well as Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, two of the top aides who were suspended and then fired last week. Caldwell, Selnick, and the third fired official, Colin Carroll (who was chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg), released a joint statement on Saturday decrying their treatment. They alleged that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door” and noted that “at this time, we still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”
They also insisted that they “remain supportive of the Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again and achieve peace through strength.” They didn’t mention Hegseth.
Now some unnamed Pentagon officials are throwing Hegseth — who is quickly running out of senior staff — under the bus, though at least one former Defense Department spokesperson is doing it publicly. John Ullyot, who resigned last week just ahead of the latest fireworks, wrote in a Politico Magazine op-ed on Sunday that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.” Ullyot, who said he stepped down because he felt sidelined at the DoD, noted that he’s a “longtime backer” of Hegseth, but added that “even strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.”
This post has been updated throughout. An earlier version said Pete Hegseth couldn’t blame “Tim Waltz” for the second group chat leak. It should have said (national security advisor) Mike Waltz — though Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, remains equally blameless in this case.
