The Clarion Call of Risking State Secrecy

"I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans."

"I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things."

"That’s what I’ve said from the beginning."

"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 doesn't matter."

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

 

"It's just fake news. They just  bring up stories."

"I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that's what he's doing."

"So you don't always have friends when you do that."

U.S. President Donald Trump

 

“It is unheard of to have a secretary of defense committing these kind of serious security breaches."

"Developing attack plans for defensive reasons is without question the most classified information you can have."

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks on the South Lawn of the White House before US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll, in Washington, April 21, 2025. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Once again U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth included his wife and brother in another Signal messaging chat, sharing details of a March military airstrike against Houthi militants from Yemen; details sent in another chain that included top Trump administration leaders, the New York Times has revealed. One individual included in the messages spoke on condition of anonymity, confirming that a second high-risk chat had taken place.

Hegseth's wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth who worked at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser have both travelled and attended high-level meetings in the past alongside the defense secretary. This second Signal chat -- a commercially available app unauthorized for use in the communication of sensitive or classified national defence information -- included 13 individuals; the chat dubbed "Defense / Team Huddle".

News of the second Signal chat was conveyed to the White House through news reports on Sunday. Speaking with reporters during the White House Easter Egg Roll, Hegseth bypassed the substance of the allegations, much less potential national security implications, and took instead to criticizing the media that keep breaking these stories injurious to trust in the Defense Secretary's judgement in casually airing classified information through security-unsecured apps.

Democrats are calling for Hegseth to be fired in the background of a Pentagon in turmoil, amidst the departures of senior aides alongside an internal investigation related to information leaks. The Trump administration actively scoffs and deflects attention from implications of risks to national security, framing the more recent Signal revelations as an outgrowth of an institutional power struggle between Hegseth and the career workforce. 

 

Even in the face of recently departed officials representing a portion of Hegseth's initial inner circle. "This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement", added White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt whose remarks were handily amplified by a Pentagon social media account.

 

To which Republican Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee wrote: "Secretary Hegseth is busy implementing President Trump's America First agenda, while these leakers are trying to undermine them both. Shameful."

 

At the request of the bipartisan leadership of the Senate armed services committee, the use of Signal by Hegseth is under investigation by the Defense Department's acting inspector general. 

"Pete Hegseth must be fired."

"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