Tag Archives: Pete Hegseth

Wall Street Journal: Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows

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Republicans react with concern about new details on posts about weapons used and timing of Yemen attack

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came under increasing scrutiny after more details emerged Wednesday showing that he posted plans of an imminent military strike against Houthi militants, including the timing and weapon systems, on an unclassified group chat used by senior administration officials.

Several Democrats called for his resignation, saying Hegseth had flouted longstanding security procedures for handling sensitive military information. And the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter Wednesday requesting the Pentagon inspector general to investigate the chat.

It asks for an assessment of Defense Department policies on sharing of sensitive and classified information on nongovernmental networks and messaging services and to examine whether any individuals transferred classified information to unclassified systems.

“The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), who chairs the committee told reporters. “If mistakes were made…they should be acknowledged.”

The new messages made public by the Atlantic magazine Wednesday showed that Hegseth texted details to other senior administration officials about the specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack and mentions intelligence that an unnamed target of the strikes was at a “known location.” 

Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries. 

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“The Signal incident is what happens when you have the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen,” [Sen. Mark] Kelly wrote on X on Wednesday. “We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign.”

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Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in Signal and warned against using it for classified information.

“It borders on incompetence,” Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said of Hegseth’s texts. “It’s certainly reckless.”

Pete Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Signal Chat Fallout Grows – WSJ

The Guardian: Mike Waltz left Venmo account public in further security breach – report

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National security adviser faces new scrutiny after adding journalist to group chat discussing Yemen attack plans

If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail, again.

Maybe some day he’ll get it down.

Perhaps.

Mike Waltz left Venmo account public in further security breach – report
National security adviser faces new scrutiny after adding journalist to group chat discussing Yemen attack plans

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/mike-waltz-venmo

The Hill: GOP lawmakers turn up the pressure on Hegseth

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under close scrutiny as Republican lawmakers criticize his handling of sensitive military information in a group chat with other administration officials that inadvertently included a journalist.

Republican lawmakers have stopped short of calling on Hegseth to resign, but they’re warning that his decision to share sensitive details about a pending military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen over Signal, a commercial app, is a clear “strike” against him.

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And they’re wondering about Hegseth’s response to reporters’ questions, specifically his adamant denial that “nobody’s texting war plans” after a National Security Council spokesperson had confirmed the chat group’s reported texts appeared to be “authentic.”

“The worst part of it is Hegseth saying himself, ‘This didn’t really happen.’ Why don’t you just admit it?” one Republican senator remarked.

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And while White House press secretary [Bimbo #1] Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday sought to draw a distinction between “war plans” and “attack plans” in criticizing The Atlantic’s reporting …  

GOP lawmakers turn up the pressure on Pete Hegseth

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

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The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

So, about that Signal chat.

On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

So if it wasn’t classified, and if the Trump administration is going to openly insult them and call them liars …

The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.

And here it is:

Houthi PC small group
Idiots used an unsecured public messaging platform to plan an attack on Houthi rebels. The discussion group was named “Houthi PC small group”. If these guys are Krasnov’s best and brightest, I’d hate to see their worst & dumbest.

Source:

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

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

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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.

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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 Just Handed His Biggest Enemy in Media a Slam Dunk
President Trump insisted that information leaked to Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg multiple times during a White House press availability Tuesday.

Trump Claims Signal Leak Not Classified Could Be Criminal

‘Tip of the iceberg’: Can Trump’s National Security adviser survive Signal scandal?

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Waltz denies texting tie to Jeffrey Goldberg

Now they are trying to lie their way out of it. Rots of ruck with that!

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, wrote that Waltz had connected with him earlier this month on Signal, a commercial messaging app, before being added to a group of national security officials who were convening electronically to discuss imminent strikes on the Houthis, a Yemen-based military movement.

While Goldberg said he had met Waltz in the past, the Trump adviser from Florida denied knowing Goldberg in comments delivered Tuesday at a White House meeting. Waltz said he “never met, don’t know,” and “never communicated with” the journalist, who broke the explosive story of Trump officials communicating about military plans on a non-secure app.

“We are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said.

President Donald Trump expressed confidence in Waltz, calling him a good man who “learned a lesson,” and attacked Goldberg as a “sleazebag” who “has made up a lot of stories.”

Meanwhile back at the ranch where everyone is sober:

But a spokesman for the National Security Council already validated the authenticity of the text chain Goldberg published, which included 18 individuals, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and an unnamed active U.S. intelligence officer.

The messages included intelligence operations, a policy debate around the timing of the strikes against the Houthis and operational details, including information on targets, weapons and the sequencing of attacks.

‘Tip of the iceberg’: Can Trump’s National Security adviser survive Signal scandal?
President Trump is standing by his National Security adviser but questions continue to pile up about his communications.

Waltz denies texting tie to Jeffrey Goldberg | Miami Herald

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

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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.

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Trump’s shocking military plan leak epitomizes a sloppy operation

New York Times: I Don’t Know How Pete Hegseth Can Look Service Members In the Eyes

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I don’t know how Pete Hegseth can look at service members in the eyes. He’s just blown his credibility as a military leader.

On Monday, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published one of the most extraordinary stories I’ve ever read. Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, apparently inadvertently invited Goldberg to join a Signal group chat (Signal is an encrypted messaging app) that seemed to include several senior Trump officials, including Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth.

A National Security Council spokesman told The Atlantic that the chat “appears to be authentic.”

No one apparently noticed Goldberg’s presence, and he had a front-row seat as they debated Trump’s decision to attack the Houthi rebels, an Iran-backed militia that had been firing on civilian shipping in the Red Sea.

Then, at 11:44 a.m. on March 15, the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” sent a message that contained “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing.”

This would be a stunning breach of security. I’m a former Army JAG officer (an Army lawyer). I’ve helped investigate numerous alleged spillages of classified information, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans, without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat.

Opinion | I Don’t Know How Pete Hegseth Can Look Service Members In the Eyes – The New York Times