White House voices support for Hegseth following new Signal chat revelation

The White House expressed its support for defence secretary Pete Hegseth following media reports that he shared sensitive military details in another Signal messaging chat, this time with his wife and brother.

Neither the White House nor Mr Hegseth denied that he had shared such information in a second chat, instead focusing their responses on what they called the disgruntled workers whom they blamed for leaking to the media and insisting that no classified information had been disclosed.

“It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories,” President Donald Trump told reporters.

“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,” Mr Trump said.

The administration’s posture was meant to hold the line against Democratic demands for Mr Hegseth’s firing at a time when the Pentagon is engulfed in turmoil, including the departures of several senior aides and an internal investigation over information leaks.

The White House also tried to deflect attention from the national security implications of the latest Signal revelation by framing it as the outgrowth of an institutional power struggle between Mr Hegseth and the career workforce. But some of the recently departed officials the administration appeared to dismiss as disgruntled were part of Mr Hegseth’s initial inner circle, brought in when he took the job.

“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in remarks amplified by a Pentagon social media account.

The latest news added to questions about the judgment of the embattled Pentagon chief, coming on top of last month’s disclosure of his participation in a Signal chat with top Trump administration leaders in which details about the military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi militants were shared.

“Pete Hegseth must be fired,” Senate democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the information shared in a Signal messaging chat with Mr Hegseth’s wife, brother and others was similar to what was communicated in the already disclosed chain with Trump administration officials.

A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the second chat to The Associated Press.

The person said it included 13 people and was dubbed “Defense Team Huddle”.

White House officials first learned of the second Signal chat from news reports on Sunday, according to an official.

Mr Hegseth, talking to reporters while attending the White House Easter Egg Roll, did not address the substance of the allegations or the national security implications they raised but assailed the media.

“They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations,” Mr Hegseth said.

“Not going to work with me. Because we’re changing the defence department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war fighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”

Republican senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, struck a similar tone, writing on X: “Secretary Hegseth is busy implementing President Trump’s America First agenda, while these leakers are trying to undermine them both. Shameful.”

The Trump administration has struggled in its public explanations about senior officials’ use of Signal, a commercially available app not authorised to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defence information.

The first chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included a number of Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.

Officials have repeatedly insisted that the information shared on Signal was not classified, though the contents of that chat, which The Atlantic published, show that Mr Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on the Iran-backed Houthis last month.

Multiple current and former military officials say launch times and munitions drop times are classified information, and putting those details on an unsecured channel could have put those pilots at risk.

The Trump administration has faced criticism for failing to take action so far against top national security officials who discussed plans for the strike in Signal, and the latest report fuelled additional calls for Mr Hegseth’s ouster.

“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Mr Schumer posted Sunday on X.

The New York Times reported that the group in the second chat included Mr Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser.

The Times said the second chat had the same warplane launch times as the first chat.

Mr Hegseth’s use of Signal is under investigation by the defence department’s acting inspector general at the request of the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The senior Democratic member, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, urged the watchdog to look into the reported second chat as well.