Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon ‘Chaos’
A former top Hegseth adviser suggested that Trump should consider replacing the embattled defense chief
Updated April 20, 2025
WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created a Signal chat with his wife, his personal lawyer and others, and posted sensitive military information into it, people familiar with the matter said Sunday, a revelation that has added to the increasing scrutiny of the novice leader.
Hegseth was already facing questions for writing flight plans and other details about a military operation ahead of U.S. strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen into a Signal chat with senior Trump administration officials. Hegseth posted nearly the same information into another chat featuring his wife and other aides that don’t require real-time knowledge of the mission, a person familiar with the chat said.
The disclosure of the Signal chat comes after an unusual number of top political appointees have either been removed from the Pentagon or resigned just in the past few weeks, some with little explanation. President Trump’s national-security team, meanwhile, is attempting to broker sensitive deals with Russia, Ukraine and Iran, putting enormous pressure on a group that is largely inexperienced in sensitive foreign-policy diplomacy.
The latest Signal chat group, a defense “Team Huddle,” included 13 people, one person familiar with it said. The chat included Hegseth’s brother, a Department of Homeland Security liaison who has traveled with the defense chief. The chat also included Hegseth’s personal lawyer. Hegseth began the chat around the time of his confirmation hearing and it was used, in part, to craft strategies ahead of his appearance on Capitol Hill, the person said.
Shortly after the New York Times earlier reported on the new Signal chat, John Ullyot, a former top Pentagon spokesman working under Hegseth, wrote in Politico that the Pentagon is in “total chaos” and “disarray” under the secretary’s leadership. Ullyot alleged that three fired Pentagon officials—all loyal to Hegseth—were wrongly smeared by anonymous officials as leakers who failed polygraph tests.
“While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test,” Ullyot wrote. “Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.”
“From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president—who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote. “President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”
Asked for further clarification about his claims, Ullyot, who resigned from the Pentagon last week, pointed the Journal to his piece.
“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda,” Sean Parnell, Pentagon spokesman, posted on X Sunday night.
In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said “any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
Among some Pentagon officials, the latest Signal chat revelation was more evidence of a Pentagon mired in unpredictability under Hegseth’s leadership. He has fired at least 10 admirals and generals, changed longstanding practices, attacked diversity initiatives and called for bringing back standards.
“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 Minority leader Chuck Schumer said on X. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”
Some Republicans have defended Hegseth’s leadership, however.
“Secretary Hegseth is working hard to implement the president’s agenda,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R, Ark.) wrote on X Sunday night.
“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,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Sunday night.
So far, he has often been quick to defend his secretary, praising his look in the job and his loyalty to the president’s America First agenda. Trump also backed Hegseth and other top aides, namely national security adviser Mike Waltz, after the media firestorm kicked off by news of the first Signal chat. And he stood by Hegseth, and expended plenty of political capital, pushing for his confirmation as the Pentagon chief despite allegations of excessive drinking, infidelity and financial mismanagement.
But Hegseth has featured in many early public-relations problems for the Pentagon—and broader Trump administration—in his first three months.
Hegseth has brought his wife, who isn’t a government employee, to some sensitive meetings at the Defense Department. He authorized a top-secret military briefing for Elon Musk about China strategy, only to downgrade the sensitivity of the meeting after intense White House blowback. And videos of the Tuskegee Airmen and images of the Enola Gay, the warplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, were temporarily removed from Defense Department websites as part of what some saw as Hegseth’s purge of anything resembling “diversity, equity, and inclusion”—or DEI. Some Pentagon officials blamed Ullyot for the website changes.
Last week, the Pentagon said it put three Hegseth staffers, Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick, on administrative leave, escorting them out of the building. In a post on X, the three said in a joint statement that “we still haven’t 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 Defense Department inspector general, at the request of the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, launched an investigation earlier this month into Hegseth’s handling of the first revealed Signal chat. It is unclear if the inspector general was aware of the second Signal chat—and whether it would be part of his investigation.
Write to Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com
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Appeared in the April 21, 2025, print edition as 'Hegseth Had Second Sensitive Chat'.