Three senior Trump administration officials who were recently fired contended that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks,” further escalating a standoff that increasingly has raised concerns about dysfunction in the Defense Department under Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Fired Pentagon officials lash out at Hegseth team
Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick, all top aides in the Defense Department, call attacks on them “baseless.”
April 19, 2025
By Dan Lamothe
The men said in the statement that they each previously served in the military and “understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it.”
“At this time, we still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with,” the statement said. “While this experience has been unconscionable, we remain supportive of the Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again and achieve peace through strength. We hope in the future to support those efforts in different capacities.”
Caldwell was a senior aide to Hegseth, and Selnick served as Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff. Carroll served as the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg.
Caldwell handled a variety of foreign policy issues, Selnick spent significant time focused on personnel issues as the Trump administration sought to drastically cut the federal workforce, and Carroll specialized in defense technology.
Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of information was launched in March by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, after several news stories had angered senior Trump administration officials. In a March 21 memo, Kasper said he wanted to be “informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure” and raised the possibility that anyone responsible could be referred for potential criminal prosecution.
The dismissals were among many personnel changes at the Pentagon that have alarmed defense officials and left staff members wondering who may be next. Defense officials, asked Friday night about a Politico news report that Kasper also will leave his role in coming days, neither confirmed nor denied the story. Kasper did not respond to requests for comment.
“At this time no final senior staffing changes have been decided, and the Secretary will make any future announcements on his own timetable,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
Hegseth already has overseen the removal of almost a dozen senior military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top admiral in the Navy, both of whom he criticized for their focus on diversity initiatives.
Hegseth’s staff removed another senior political appointee, John Ullyot, from his role as a Pentagon spokesman last month after weeks of concern about his judgment. He has since left the Defense Department.
The turmoil comes as Hegseth and other senior administration officials face ongoing scrutiny of their own for handling of sensitive information. Last month, the Atlantic magazine reported that its top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to an unclassified group chat on the commercial messaging application Signal in which key advisers to President Donald Trump discussed plans for a U.S. military attack on militants in Yemen.
Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, mistakenly included the journalist, while Hegseth disclosed details about the military operation before it occurred. Such information typically is considered so highly classified that it requires code word access and a secure line of communication, former defense officials have said.
Hegseth has vehemently denied assertions that what he shared in the group chat contained classified material. The Defense Department inspector general’s office will scrutinize the disclosures, it said this month.