Defense Department Inspector General Will Evaluate Pete Hegseth’s Role In Signal Chat

03 Apr 2025 by Molly Bohannon · Forbes

Topline

The Department of Defense’s inspector general is looking into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal to discuss “information pertaining to military actions in Yemen”—despite the White House saying earlier this week the case had been closed.

Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth listens as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the ... More Oval Office of the White House on March 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.Getty Images

Key Facts

Steven Stebbens, acting inspector general of the Defense Department, said in a letter Thursday his office was “initiating the subject evaluation” into Hegesth’s use of Signal, a commercially available and not secure messaging platform, for official business.

The evaluation is in response to a request from the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee—Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., respectively—to look into the Signal incident and whether any DoD policies were broken or classified information was transferred.

Stebbens said in the letter the evaluation will seek to “determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures” and will “review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”

Key Background

On March 25, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a bombshell article alleging he had unintentionally been added to a Signal group chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in which President Donald Trump’s Cabinet officials discussed war plans. The chat included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and more, with Goldberg reporting the messages sent by Hegseth “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.” Hegseth pushed back, saying “nobody was texting war plans.” Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle called for an investigation into the use of Signal and the inclusion of Goldberg in the chat but Trump stood by Waltz.

Contra

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters “this case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned,” and she said, “there have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again . . . we’re moving forward.”

Tangent

Trump fired at least six National Security Council officials after far-right activist Laura Loomer urged Trump to remove them, The New York Times reported Thursday. Waltz was reportedly at the meeting between Loomer—who was a controversial presence on Trump’s presidential campaign—and Trump in which she “excoriated” the officials she felt were disloyal to Trump.