- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing scrutiny over allegations he sent sensitive information to a Signal group chat that included his wife and personal contacts.
- Hegseth dismissed the accusations as a "hoax" and blamed "disgruntled former employees" for leaking information to the media.
- Rep. Don Bacon called the situation "totally unacceptable" while President Trump defended Hegseth, stating he is "doing a great job."
After news broke of Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg being inadvertently added to a high security Signal group chat near the end of March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is coming under scrutiny again because of how he’s using the app.
Citing anonymous sources, The New York Times reported on Sunday that Hegseth sent the same information to a separate group chat called “Defense | Team Huddle.” But this time, the group members contained his wife and a dozen other people from his personal and professional life.
The group chat was allegedly a “forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information,” and people in the group said Hegseth “typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations.”
The Times reportedly reached out to a U.S. official over the accusations, and they maintained there was no national security breach.
“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official said, per The New York Times. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”
Hegseth calls the accusation a ‘hoax’
At the White House Easter egg roll on Monday, a reporter asked Hegseth if he had anything he’d like to say about the “Signal chat controversy.”
Standing with his children, Hegseth replied, “What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax.”
“This is what the media does, he said. “They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me. Because we’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters, and anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news don’t matter.”
Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon: ‘I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge’
Asked by a White House pool reporter Monday to respond to accusations that Hegseth created an unauthorized group chat and shared classified information with family members, President Donald Trump said, “Here we go again.”
“Just a waste of time. He is doing a great job,” Trump said.
The reporter asked, “Why do you still have confidence?” and the president responded, “Because he’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing.”
Meanwhile, the chairman of the HASC Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., had a different take.
“If it’s true that he had another (Signal) chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it’s totally unacceptable,” Bacon said on Monday.
He continued, “I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge."
Bacon added that he believes “there’s a meltdown going on” at the Pentagon, per reporting by Politico reporter Rachel Bade.
“There’s a lot — a lot — of smoke come out of the Pentagon, and I got to believe there’s some fire there somewhere,“ he said.