It has been lower than a month—in case you can truthfully consider that—since The Atlantic reported that Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth accidentally texted delicate army strike plans to certainly one of its editors in a Sign group chat.
Because it seems, there was extra the place that got here from.
According to The New York Instances, Hegseth shared the identical particulars concerning the March 15 strike in Yemen with one other Sign chat totally. This one reportedly included roughly a dozen folks, together with Hegseth’s brother and private lawyer, who’re each Pentagon workers, in addition to Hegseth’s spouse, who’s…nicely, not.
In contrast to the group chat within the first Signalgate scandal, which was created by Nationwide Safety Advisor Michael Waltz, the Instances reviews that Hegseth created the second chat. And, additionally not like the unique Signalgate—which included high White Home and cupboard officers like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—it’s unclear why most of the folks on Hegseth’s separate chat would have to be briefed on the strike plans. Hegseth’s spouse, for one, is a former Fox Information producer.
In a press release posted to X, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote, “There was no labeled data in any Sign chat, irrespective of what number of methods they attempt to write the story.”
Parnell tried to dismiss the Instances’ reporting because the work of disgruntled former staffers who had been laid off from the Division of Protection final week. However that isn’t fairly the salve Parnell appears to suppose it’s.
Signalgate 2.0 comes within the midst of a rising refrain of reviews of pandemonium inside the Pentagon, together with from a few of Hegseth’s closest advisors. Mere hours after the Instances’ story revealed, the Division of Protection’s former chief spokesperson and a high cheerleader of Hegseth’s, John Ullyot, revealed a shocking op-ed in Politico, which described a “month of complete chaos” contained in the Pentagon.
“In brief, the constructing is in disarray underneath Hegseth’s management,” Ullyot wrote.
Ullyot, who resigned from the Division of Protection final week, pointed to the latest purge of high Pentagon officers, who had been reportedly fired as a part of an investigation into division leaks. “But none of that is true,” Ullyot wrote, explaining that not one of the officers had been given polygraph checks, because the Division indicated they could. “Sadly, Hegseth’s group has developed a behavior of spreading flat-out, simply debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their manner out the door,” Ullyot wrote.
The three officers who had been fired Friday additionally defended their innocence in a publish on X over the weekend. “At the moment, we nonetheless haven’t been instructed what precisely we had been investigated for, if there may be nonetheless an energetic investigation, or if there was even an actual investigation of ‘leaks’ to start with,” their assertion learn. The timing of those firings is especially curious at a second when Hegseth’s personal Sign account seems to be the leakiest of all.
In his op-ed, Ullyot described the “Month from Hell” contained in the workplace, throughout which the Pentagon public affairs group flubbed Hegseth’s response to the primary Signalgate, encouraging Hegseth to have interaction in a tedious battle of semantics, insisting “no one was texting struggle plans.” Then got here reporting that Hegseth had brought his spouse to conferences with overseas army officers and tried to arrange a briefing for Elon Musk on the US’ plans within the occasion of a struggle with China.
Whereas Ullyot mentioned he’s grateful for Hegseth’s friendship, he wrote that President Trump “deserves higher,” and that if he had been to fireplace Hegseth, like so many cupboard members earlier than him, “many within the secretary’s personal inside circle will applaud quietly.”
