BURSTDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth has moved to the center of the storm over a Signal group chat scandal, seeking to beat back questions about whether he shared confidential military plans and put service members in potential danger.
While the White House and its allies on Tuesday and Wednesday sought to downplay the sensitivity of the information shared, Hegseth’s deflections and denials are not going over well with current and retired troops and officers, Democrats and even some on the right.
National security adviser Mike Waltz apparently invited The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg into a chat group with more than a dozen top Trump administration officials. But it was Hegseth who shared specific details of imminent U.S. attacks against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Both Waltz and Hegseth have faced growing calls from Democrats for their ouster, and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the Senate Armed Services Committee chair, pushed for an inspector general to promptly probe what happened.
"The so-called Secretary of Defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a letter to President Trump on Tuesday, calling for the Pentagon chief to be “fired immediately."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) later Tuesday told reporters, “He should be fired. I agree.”
In new screenshots of the chat's texts, released Wednesday by The Atlantic, the Pentagon chief relayed specific information related to weapons used and the timing of attacks — including the exact times American F-18 fighter aircraft and MQ-9 drones took off for Yemen before the March 15 airstrikes.
Hegseth insists that no “war plans” or confidential information was included in the chats, but he has left many questions unanswered, notably, why the plans weren’t confidential and whether he was using Signal to relay other sensitive operations.
“Nobody's texting war plans,” Hegseth told reporters before departing Hawaii Wednesday, attacking Goldberg’s expertise on matters of war planning.
“You know who sees war plans? I see them. Every. Single. Day,” he added.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) did not mince words in her response to Hegseth’s defense.
“Pete Hegseth is a f‑‑‑ing liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed,” she said in a social platform X post.
“He needs to resign in disgrace immediately,” added Duckworth, a former Black Hawk pilot who lost both her legs when a rocket-propelled grenade hit her aircraft during the Iraq War.
Hegseth texted the group that attacks were incoming 31 minutes before the first U.S. aircraft launched strikes in Yemen and two hours and one minute before the Houthi targets were expected to be struck by American aircraft.
“If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests — or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media — the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic,” Goldberg and national security and intelligence reporter Shane Harris wrote.
The slipup has put the usually camera-ready Hegseth on his back foot.
As he was departing Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Wednesday, the Pentagon chief briefly addressed the controversy, wearing a camouflage baseball cap emblazoned with the American flag, his sunglasses tucked into a shirt with the top two buttons undone.
“There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information,” Hegseth said, referring to the released texts, a near identical message to the one he posted to X earlier in the day.
Hegseth also argued, as have other Trump administration officials, that the texts were not technically “war plans,” as The Atlantic had stated.
Goldberg has called that argument semantics, and The Atlantic noted that the White House opposed its publishing of the information, despite also saying it wasn’t classified.
There’s little debate that the multiday airstrikes against the Houthis could be considered an act of war.
And the prior details of such attacks should have been more closely guarded, as officials typically are only meant to provide such information through classified conversations, documents, or over secure email, according to national security experts.
“You do not need to be a member of the military or intelligence community to know that this information is exactly what the enemy would want to know,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant Defense secretary under the first Trump administration, told Politico. “And it does clearly put our military members at risk.”
Retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris in her presidential run, said Wednesday on CNN that Trump needed to hold his senior officials accountable and called on Hegseth to resign.
“There were critical battle damage assessments. There was human intelligence that was contained in that thread,” Anderson told CNN. “This is absolutely egregious. This is top secret information. These people should be fired.”
And Wicker on Wednesday told reporters that the information as published “appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified.”
Wicker also said that he and Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the top Democrat on the Armed Services panel, are calling on the administration to expedite an inspector general report back to the committee.
At least 16 Democrats have now called on Hegseth to resign or be fired: Jeffries, Schumer, Duckworth, Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (Va.), Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), and Reps. Ted Lieu (Calif.), Brad Schneider (Ill.) Nikki Budzinski (Ill.) Gil Cisneros (Calif.), Eugene Vindman (Va.), Herb Conaway (N.J.), Marilyn Strickland (Wash.), Jennifer McClellan (Va.), Susie Lee (Nevada) and Ami Bera (Calif.).