• Democrats insist US defence secretary ‘must resign in disgrace’
• Pentagon officials fired following probe over Yemen scandal
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump stands behind US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday, after reports that he shared details of a March attack on Yemen’s Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
The revelations that Hegseth used the unclassified messaging system Signal for the second time to share highly sensitive security details come at a delicate moment for him, with senior officials ousted from the Pentagon last week as part of investigations into alleged leaks.
“The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon,” Leavitt told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. “And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.”
In the second chat, Hegseth shared details of the attack similar to those revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat on the Signal app by mistake.
The second chat included about a dozen people and was created during Hegseth’s confirmation process to discuss administrative issues rather than detailed military planning. Among them was Hegseth’s brother, who is a Department of Homeland Security liaison to the Pentagon. Leavitt said Hegseth shared no classified information on either Signal chat.
The chat included details of the schedule of the air strikes, a source familiar with the matter said.
Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, has attended sensitive meetings with foreign military counterparts, according to images the Pentagon has publicly posted. During a meeting Hegseth had with his British counterpart at the Pentagon in March, his wife could be seen sitting behind him.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, without evidence, said that the media was “enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.” “The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. We’ve already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down,” Parnell said in a statement on X.
The latest revelation comes days after Dan Caldwell, one of Hegseth’s leading advisers, was escorted from the Pentagon after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Department of Defence.
Following Caldwell’s departure, less-senior officials Darin Selnick, who recently became Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, who was chief of staff to Deputy Defence Secretary Steve Feinberg, were put on administrative leave and fired on Friday.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that “recently fired leakers are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda.
Tumultuous moment for Hegseth
Democratic lawmakers said Hegseth could no longer stay in his job. “We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a post to X. “But Trump is still too weak to fire him. Pete Hegseth must be fired.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who suffered grave injuries in combat in 2004, said that Hegseth “must resign in disgrace.” A US official at the Pentagon questioned how Hegseth could keep his job after the latest news.
“We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defence ended,” Caldwell posted on X on Saturday. “Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”
