WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump stands behind United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday (Apr 21), after reports that he shared details of a March attack on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
The revelations that Hegseth used the unclassified messaging system Signal to share highly sensitive security details for the second time come at a delicate moment for him, with senior officials ousted from the Pentagon last week as part of an internal leak investigation.
“The president absolutely has confidence in Secretary Hegseth. I spoke to him about it this morning, and he stands behind him,” Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
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, Reuters reported on Sunday.
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.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Hegseth said, “I have spoken to the president, and we are going to continue fighting on the same page all the way.”
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 Defense.
Caldwell played a critical role for Hegseth and was named as the Pentagon’s point person by the secretary in the first Signal chat.
“We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended,” Caldwell posted on X on Saturday.
“Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”
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 Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, were put on administrative leave and fired on Friday.
