Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did use his personal phone to send sensitive information to two group chats on the messaging app Signal, three officials have told NBC News.
Hegseth, the Pentagon, and the White House have pushed back hard against the allegations, with Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell telling the network that “No classified material was ever shared via Signal.”
The allegations are “an attempt to sabotage President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” he added.
Last month, just minutes before the U.S. conducted strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the leader of U.S. Central Command, used a secure government system to send details about the mission to Hegseth, NBC News reported. The information included when fighter jets would depart and when they would strike their targets. The inadvertent release of such information could endanger the pilots.
Two sources told NBC News that less than 10 minutes after receiving the information on the secure system, Hegseth shared it with the two group chats. One was the chat with other cabinet-level officials, and accidentally, the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, which caused a sensation when it was revealed last month. The second group included Hegseth’s wife, his brother, his lawyer, and some aides. The existence of that chat was initially reported by The New York Times on Sunday.
Hegseth used Signal to share the information despite having been warned to take care not to share sensitive information on insecure systems, two people told NBC.
Hegseth appeared on Fox News on Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends, the show he previously hosted on the weekends.
“What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination, other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning,” said Hegseth.
The secretary added that “Those folks who are leaking, who have been pushed out of the building, are now attempting to leak and sabotage the president’s agenda. We’re for the war fighters. We’re for the president. And none of this is based in reality.”
Democrats and some Republicans were concerned about Hegseth’s qualifications before his confirmation. Following the revelation of the second Signal group chat, Hegseth now faces calls for his removal. President Donald Trump, however, has so far stood behind his defense secretary, including during the White House Easter Egg Roll.
“Pete’s doing a great job; everybody’s happy with him,” the president said Monday. “There’s no dysfunction.”
“It's just fake news. They just bring up stories,” Trump added. “I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. 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.”
Hegseth also appeared at the Egg Roll and rejected the reports.
“This is what the media does,” said Hegseth.
“They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations,” the secretary argued.
“It’s not going to work with me, because we’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war fighters, and anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter,” he added.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Hegseth is “doing a tremendous job and he is bringing monumental change to the Pentagon," adding that Trump “stands strongly behind him.”
“There’s a lot of people in the city who reject monumental change, and I think, frankly, that’s why we’ve seen a smear campaign against the secretary of defense,” she claimed.
House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Don Bacon became the first sitting Republican member of Congress to call for Hegseth to go.
“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” the retired Air Force General said Monday.
“I like him on Fox, but does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern,” he added.
However, one Trump adviser told NBC News: “There is no talk right now of removing or replacing him. We have been through this before, and as of the moment, it’s just not something we are talking about.”
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