Defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of an upcoming military strike against the Houthi group in Yemen in a second Signal chat, which included his own wife and brother, according to The New York Times.
The paper says details, including flight schedules for the warplanes involved, were shared in the group chat on March 15.
The claims follow shock revelations last month that the upcoming strike was discussed by senior administration figures, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz on Signal, a commercial messaging up, instead of using the high-security communications systems available to them.
The story came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, had accidentally been added to the chat.
The new reporting claims that Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, was included on a second Signal group chat about the Yemen attack, along with his brother Phil.
Jennifer Rauchet has accompanied her husband on official trips and Phil Hegseth works for the Department of Defense, but it was not clear why either of them might have been included in the planning for the airstrikes.
The New York Times also reports that Pete Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, was included in the group chat. The paper cites four people with knowledge of the chat for its reporting.
A U.S. official declined to comment when approached by the newspaper as to whether Hegseth shared detailed attack plans, but said there was “no national security breach.”
“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official told the Times. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”
The Independent has contacted the Pentagon for comment.
Hegseth created the Signal group named “Defense | Team Huddle” and was reportedly posting in it approximately the same time he shared the same details in the Signal group created by Waltz, people familiar with the group chat told the Times.
The defense secretary also used his personal phone to access the Signal chat, according to the newspaper.
In the days before the Yemen attack, aides reportedly warned Hegseth not to use the “Defense | Team Huddle” group chat to discuss any sensitive operational details. He was also “encouraged” to move discussions from his personal device to his government phone. “But Mr. Hegseth never made the transition,” the Times notes, citing people familiar with the Signal chat.
The chat included Hegseth’s senior advisers, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, according to the Times, who were recently fired after being accused of leaking unauthorized information. The pair denied the accusations in a joint statement posted on social media over the weekend.
Other members of the chat, in addition to Hegseth’s wife and brother, “were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation,” according to the outlet.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs while on combat duty in Iraq, and who now sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for Hegseth’s resignation.
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“How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f***ing liar, he is a threat to our national security?” Duckworth wrote in a post on X. “Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth added. “He must resign in disgrace.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on President Donald Trump to fire Hegseth. “The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk,” Schumer reacted in a post on X. “But Trump is still too weak to fire him. Pete Hegseth must be fired.”
The Defense Department’s acting inspector general is currently investigating the original Signal chat that accidentally included Goldberg.
In a letter to Hegseth earlier this month, Steven Stebbins said he will review whether the defense secretary broke any rules regarding the sharing of classified information.
It is unclear whether Stebbins had already uncovered the reported second Signal chat before the Times published its report.
Last month reports emerged that Hegseth brought his wife to two meetings with foreign military officials.
The Wall Street Journal reported that sensitive information was discussed in both meetings, one with U.K. officials and another with NATO defense ministers, according to multiple people who were either present or had knowledge of the discussions.
His wife was said to have been present at a March 6 meeting at the Pentagon with Britain’s Secretary of Defence John Healy and Admiral Tony Radakin, head of the U.K. armed forces.
Beyond the Signalgate scandal, Trump himself has repeatedly been accused of mishandling secret information. In 2023 he was criminally charged over thousands of secret papers found by the FBI at his home in Mar-a-Lago, some of them stacked up in a bathroom. Trump pleaded not guilty before the case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon. Although the then-special counsel Jack Smith appealed her decision, the case was wound down when Trump was re-elected as president in November 2024.
Months after taking office in his first term, Trump shared classified Israeli intelligence with the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time, Sergey Kislyak, during a meeting in the Oval Office. Amid uproar, Trump insisted he had every right to do so.
And in 2019, Trump tweeted a classified satellite image of a failed Iranian rocket launch to his millions of followers, which he argued was his “absolute right.”
