White House voices support for Hegseth as a new Signal chat revelation stirs fresh Pentagon turmoil

WASHINGTON AP The White House expressed assistance Monday for Defense 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 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 explained 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 dependably have friends when you do that Trump stated The administration s posture was meant to hold the line against Democratic demands for Hegseth s firing at a time when the Pentagon is engulfed in turmoil including the departures of several senior aides and an internal research over information leaks The White House also tried to deflect attention from the national guard implications of the latest Signal revelation by framing it as the outgrowth of an institutional power struggle between Hegseth and the career workforce But particular of the not long ago departed leaders the administration appeared to dismiss as disgruntled were part of 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 revealed 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 disclosed Latest reports of Hegseth s Signal use The New York Times disclosed Sunday that the information shared in a Signal messaging chat with Hegseth s wife brother and others was similar to what was communicated in the already disclosed chain with Trump administration authorities A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters established the second chat to The Associated Press The person noted it included people and was dubbed Defense Gang Huddle White House bureaucrats first learned of the second Signal chat from news reports Sunday according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations Hegseth talking to reporters while attending the White House Easter Egg Roll didn t address the substance of the claims or the national guard 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 Hegseth explained Not going to work with me Because we re changing the Defense Department putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn t matter Republican Sen Tom Cotton chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee struck a similar tone writing on Sunday night 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 s response on the use of Signal The Trump administration has struggled in its residents explanations about senior administrators use of Signal a commercially available app not authorized to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information The first chat set up by national prevention 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 Leaders have repeatedly insisted that the information shared on Signal was not classified though the contents of that chat which The Atlantic published shows that Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on the Iran-backed Houthis last month Multiple current and former military bureaucrats say launch times and munitions drop times are classified information and putting those details on an unsecured channel could have put those pilots at menace The Trump administration has faced criticism for failing to take action so far against top national safeguard agents who discussed plans for the strike in Signal and the latest overview fueled additional calls for Hegseth s ouster The details keep coming out We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at menace But Trump is still too weak to fire him Schumer posted Sunday on X The New York Times published that the group in the second chat included 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 Shield liaison and senior adviser The Times noted the second chat had the same warplane launch times that the first chat included Hegseth s Signal use is under scrutiny by the Defense 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 Sunday to look into the revealed second chat as well Wider turmoil inside the Pentagon The Pentagon has confronted a wave of turbulence stretching beyond Signal Defense officers have faced scrutiny over a seemingly haphazard and disjointed campaign to purge online content that promoted women and minorities in selected cases scrambling to restore posts after their removals came to light Over the past week five authorities in Hegseth s inner circle have departed Last week Dan Caldwell a Hegseth aide Colin Carroll chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg and Darin Selnick Hegseth s deputy chief of staff were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department hunts down leaks of inside information While those three initially had been placed on leave pending the review a joint announcement shared by Caldwell on X on Saturday disclosed they still have not been narrated what exactly we were investigated for if there is still an operational research or if there was even a real study of leaks to begin with Another close Hegseth aide chief of staff Joe Kasper also was leaving according to two leaders They didn t say why Caldwell and Selnick had worked with the defense secretary during his time leading the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America Kasper was the one who sent a March memo saying the Pentagon was inspecting what it called leaks of national prevention information and that Defense Department personnel could face polygraphs Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot informed he was resigning last week unrelated to the leaks The Pentagon revealed however that Ullyot was demanded to resign And on Monday three U S agents announced another staff member Sean Parnell was shifting temporarily from his job as Hegseth s chief spokesman and instead will spend more time in Hegseth s front office The agents all spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of personnel moves