Calls were being made today for Donald Trump’s controversial Secretary of Defence to be sacked after classified information was sent to his wife and brother.
Pete Hegseth created a Signal messaging chat that included his relatives, as well as his personal lawyer, where he shared details of a March military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi militants, sent in another chain with Trump administration leaders. The details emerged weeks after he was involved in a second group chat in which a US journalist was mistakenly added.
It was claimed that 13 people participated in the second chat on Signal, a commercially available app not authorised to communicate sensitive or classified national defence information. The New York Times reported that the group included Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, and his brother, Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser.
Both have travelled with the defence secretary and attended high-level meetings, including one with British defence minister John Healey. The White House has dismissed the latest report as a “non-story”, suggesting that disgruntled former Pentagon employees were spreading false claims.
“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly. “Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the president’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”
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The revelation of the additional chat group brought fresh criticism against Hegseth and US President Donald Trump’s wider administration after it had failed to take action against the top national security officials who discussed plans for the military strike in Signal.
“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”
In March, it emerged that US national security officials, including Hegseth, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported.
The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic”. The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing”, editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.
It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and at the least are kept secure to protect service members and operational security. The US has conducted air strikes against the Houthis since the militant group began targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea in November 2023.
Just two hours after Mr Goldberg received the details of the attack on March 15, the US began launching a series of air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The National Security Council said in a statement that it was looking into how a journalist’s number was added to the chain in the Signal group chat.
Trump told reporters he was not aware of the apparent breach in protocol. “I know nothing about it,” he said at the time, adding that The Atlantic was “not much of a magazine”. He went on to say: “I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.” Government officials have used Signal for organisational correspondence, but it is not classified and can be hacked.
The sharing of sensitive information comes as Defence Secretary Hegseth’s office has just announced a crackdown on leaks of sensitive information, including the potential use of polygraphs on defence personnel to determine how reporters have received information.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called for a full investigation, saying: “This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time.”
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