Wall Street Journal: Hegseth Brought His Wife to Sensitive Meetings With Foreign Military Officials

Defense secretary’s handling of sensitive information is under fire after he shared details about a strike on Houthi militants in a group chat on a widely used app

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is facing scrutiny over his handling of details of a military strike, brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, according to multiple people who were present or had knowledge of the discussions.

One of the meetings, a high-level discussion at the Pentagon on March 6 between Hegseth and U.K. Secretary of Defense John Healey, took place at a sensitive moment for the trans-Atlantic alliance, one day after the U.S. said it had cut off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The group that met at the Pentagon, which included Adm. Tony Radakin, the head of the U.K.’s armed forces, discussed the U.S. rationale behind that decision, as well as future military collaboration between the two allies, according to people familiar with the meeting. 

Jennifer Hegseth also attended a meeting last month at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels where allied defense officials discussed their support for Ukraine, according to two people who attended the meeting. Hegseth’s brother Philip Hegseth has also been traveling with him on official visits, the Pentagon said.

Too stupid to learn?

Exclusive | Hegseth Brought His Wife to Sensitive Meetings With Foreign Military Officials – WSJ

Associated Press: Bondi [Bimbo #3] signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries

Even as President Donald Trump insisted “it’s not really an FBI thing,” the reality is that the FBI and Justice Department for decades have been responsible for enforcing Espionage Act statutes governing the mishandling — whether intentional or negligent — of national defense information like the kind shared on Signal, a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications but is not approved for classified information.

The Justice Department has broad discretion to open an investigation, though Attorney General Pam Bondi, who introduced Trump at a Justice Department event this month, signaled at an unrelated news conference on Thursday that she was disinclined to do so. She repeated Trump administration talking points that the highly sensitive information in the chat was not classified, though current and former U.S. officials have said the posting of the exact launch times of aircraft and times that bombs would be released before those pilots were even in the air would have been classified.

Pam Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely | AP News

Mediaite: Trump Just Handed His Biggest Enemy in Media a Slam Dunk

LOL! After all that whining about Hillary Clinton’s email server!

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

President Donald Trump insisted that information leaked to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was not classified multiple times during a White House press availability Tuesday afternoon. But his defiant tone may have just backed his administration into a corner of litigious federal investigations, potentially giving one of his most prominent and influential critics a major win.

Pro-Trump media figures have since bent over backwards to try to defend the massive security breach, which could potentially involve crimes, given the law that Trump enacted during his first administration in response to Hillary Clinton’s email server controversy.

Trump Claims Signal Leak Not Classified Could Be Criminal

UK Daily Mail: Trump team sparks fury with ‘sickening’ choice of emojis while describing their war plans in leaked Signal chat

The use of emojis in a leaked Trump administration group chat discussing strikes on Houthi targets has sparked outrage, with accusations that officials made light of the sensitive topics being discussed.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, revealed on Monday that Trump’s national security advisor Michael Waltz had – seemingly inadvertently – added him to a group chat called ‘Houthi PC small group’.

The chat appears to have served as a virtual war room for some of the President’s top team, including Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Goldberg said that Hegseth shared the war plan with the group at 11.44am eastern time on Saturday March 15, two hours before the bombs began dropping on Yemen.

As news broke of the strikes, the journalist checked the group chat where he found a flurry of emojis and congratulations flooding the text chain.

Waltz updated the group at 1.48pm, saying the operation had been an ‘amazing job’ before sending three emojis a few minutes later – a fist, an American flag, and fire.

Trump team sparks fury with ‘sickening’ choice of emojis while describing their war plans in leaked Signal chat | Daily Mail Online

Washington Post: Trump’s shocking military plan leak epitomizes a sloppy operation

The second Trump administration has clearly made a decision to move fast and break things. Largely gone are the establishment Republican figures and steady hands that sometimes resisted President Donald Trump during his first term. In their place are a bunch of people with less subject-matter and governmental experience but with the zeal of MAGA true believers, eager to implement Trump’s complete governmental overhaul and to bust through the traditional guardrails in the process.

The result is a very — and increasingly — sloppy first two months, by any objective measure.

The big headline Monday was that top Trump national security officials shared sensitive military plans for impending strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels with the editor in chief of the Atlantic. The White House confirmed to The Washington Post that the editor was inadvertently included in the messages.

The editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to the string of messages on Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging service. The group included the names of prominent administration figures, such as national security adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, all strategizing about the impending attacks.

The messages were sent before the strikes began last weekend and previewed almost precisely when they ultimately took place.

Trump’s shocking military plan leak epitomizes a sloppy operation

Washington Post: Trump’s shocking military plan leak epitomizes a sloppy operation

The second Trump administration has clearly made a decision to move fast and break things. Largely gone are the establishment Republican figures and steady hands that sometimes resisted President Donald Trump during his first term. In their place are a bunch of people with less subject-matter and governmental experience but with the zeal of MAGA true believers, eager to implement Trump’s complete governmental overhaul and to bust through the traditional guardrails in the process.

The result is a very — and increasingly — sloppy first two months, by any objective measure.

The editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to the string of messages on Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging service. The group included the names of prominent administration figures, such as national security adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, all strategizing about the impending attacks.

The messages were sent before the strikes began last weekend and previewed almost precisely when they ultimately took place.

Trump’s shocking military plan leak epitomizes a sloppy operation