Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used his personal phone to send information about U.S. military operations in Yemen to a 13-person Signal group chat, including his wife and his brother, two sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed to NBC News.
He did so after an aide had warned him to be careful not to share sensitive information on an unsecure communications system before the Yemen operation, the sources said.
The development comes about a month after it became public that Hegseth shared details of strikes in Yemen in a separate Signal chat with top administration officials. The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was mistakenly added to that chain.
The New York Times first reported the existence of the second Signal chat.
The Times cited four unnamed sources. Some of them, the Times reported, said the information Hegseth sent in the second chat — such as the flight schedule of the FA-18 planes being used — appeared to be similar to information he had shared in the Signal chat reported by the editor of The Atlantic. One source confirmed that to NBC News.
Sean Parnell, the chief Defense Department spokesman, denied that Hegseth had shared classified information. “There was no classified information in any Signal chat,” he said on X.
Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, played down the significance of the second group chat.
“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,” she said in a statement.
Hegseth himself spoke to reporters Monday morning from the White House, at a preview of the annual Egg Roll there. Asked about the second Signal chat, he attacked both the press and “leakers,” but did not specifically deny the reports.
“You know, what a big surprise that a bunch of leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out,” Hegseth said. He added, “It’s not going to work with me, because we’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war fighters, and anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”
The second group chat
Thirteen people were in the second Signal group chat, but no other Cabinet-level officials were included, the two sources said.
Participants included Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff; Darin Selnick, his deputy chief of staff; Eric Geressy, a retired Army sergeant major and Hegseth adviser; Tim Parlatore, a legal adviser to Hegseth and a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps; Hegseth’s brother, Phil, senior adviser to Hegseth for the Department of Homeland Security; and Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, according to the two sources.
In March, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added to a Signal chat with multiple national security leaders, on which Hegseth shared operational plans for striking military targets in Yemen before they occurred. That chat is now the subject of an investigation by the Defense Department’s inspector general.
In both instances, Hegseth used his personal phone, rather than his official one, the two sources said.
Hegseth came under scrutiny last month after it was revealed that his wife, a former Fox News producer, attended sensitive Defense Department meetings with British and NATO leaders. Jennifer Hegseth is not a Pentagon employee.
Hegseth’s brother, Phil, is employed in the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security adviser to Hegseth— but it is not clear why he or Jennifer Hegseth would need to know or be privy to information about the military strikes in Yemen.
Recent turnover in Pentagon
The Defense Department has had heavy turnover in the past week. Two of Hegseth’s top advisers, Dan Caldwell and Selnick, were escorted out of the Pentagon early last week in connection with an investigation of allegations of a leak of sensitive information.
The official who announced the investigation into the supposed leak weeks ago, Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, left his role at the Pentagon late last week, Politico reported. And Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, was also forced out late last week.
Caldwell, Selnick and Carroll said in a joint social media statement Saturday saying that did not know why they were being investigated, saying, “Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”
Democrats reacted quickly to Sunday’s news. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., posted on X that Hegseth “must be fired.”
“The details keep coming out,” Schumer said. “We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said on X: “The latest story about Pete Hegseth’s carelessness with sensitive information is yet another alarming example in this administration’s unbroken pattern of incompetence. He should resign.”
Sen Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a military veteran, called Hegseth “a threat to our national security” in a statement.
“Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered,” she said.
