Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 21, 2025.
NPR reported on Monday that the Trump administration is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as secretary of the Defense Department. The reason is that, as The New York Times reports, Hegseth was caught sharing highly sensitive details of military operations against the Houthis in Yemen in a group chat on the Signal app—again. He created the chat himself, whose members included his wife, his brother, and his lawyer. No less than four different people told the Times they had personal knowledge of the chat. Former Defense spokesman John Ullyot, who briefly worked for Hegseth, writes at Politico that the scandal, plus Hegseth’s numerous other erratic decisions, has created “a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon”.
Hegseth, for those who may have forgotten, was previously a Fox News weekend talking head—not even a prime-time guy—who has been credibly accused of alcohol abuse and paid a $50,000 settlement to settle a sexual assault allegation. He had never managed a major organization—just a small nonprofit that was credibly accused of financial mismanagement—and his military career topped out at the rank of major. He might just be the most unqualified cabinet appointee of any kind in American history. When you put someone like that in charge of the Pentagon, this is what happens.
Though it feels more like a thousand years ago, it was just less than a month when Hegseth was embroiled in a scandal that would have meant the end of his career and permanent ignominy for any official in a normal administration. The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, where top administration officials, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and top Trump aide Stephen Miller, discussed elaborate details of a March airstrike against Houthi forces in Yemen. Hegseth in particular posted the type of planes and their exact departure times.
It’s hard to know where to start with these stories. For one thing, all these group chats basically have to be a violation of multiple laws regarding classified information. Now, American law in this area, particularly the Espionage Act, is kind of a mess. People like Reality Winner and Charles Littlejohn have gone to prison for years for disclosing information that didn’t harm national security in the slightest.
But certain stipulations are simply common sense—in particular, 18 U.S. Code § 793 (f), which states that anyone in possession of “any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense,” who “through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust” can be fined and imprisoned for up to 10 years.
Obviously, you don’t want people throwing military plans around willy-nilly because the enemy might hear about them. The Houthis have some air defense capability; Hegseth’s outrageous irresponsibility could have easily gotten American pilots killed.
At least the Russians and the Chinese, and probably a half-dozen other nations, must be assumed to have a periscope into top American military communications.
It’s worth noting also that the Signal chats published by The Atlantic show both a total lack of any kind of strategic plan for these attacks—more like a desire to produce some explosions that would play well on television—and a gleeful embrace of war crimes. One alleged Houthi fighter was pursued to his girlfriend’s apartment building, which was subsequently destroyed entirely, in clear violation of international treaties. Vice President Vance replied, “Excellent.”
Far be it from me to comment on the actual effectiveness of this campaign, but the Houthis have shot down several U.S. Predator drones, and the strikes have not stopped Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea that were the entire point of the American response. The U.S. upped the ante last week by bombing an oil port held by the Houthis in a deadly strike, killing more than 75 Yemenis. But Pentagon officials have conceded to Congress that they have spent upwards of $200 million in munitions with little to no progress on any actual goals.
Hegseth’s actions also almost certainly violate document retention laws. Though that may sound like boring bureaucratic box-checking, these laws are a fundamental part of American government. As Josh Marshall argues, “the U.S. government is the property of the American people and it persists over time with individual officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with administering an entity they don’t own or possess.” It is vital for future generations—not least of which historians—to be able to understand what happened in the past through reference to government archives, and information that is classified today will eventually be open to the public. Hegseth and company were certainly carrying out these discussions through private apps where messages can be automatically erased so as to conceal their potentially criminal conduct from the public.
One can only speculate as to the motives of whoever leaked these chats to the Times. Perhaps a certain faction among Trump’s herd of squabbling morons is embarrassed by Hegseth and trying to get him fired. (What kind of weirdo has one sideburn that is three inches longer than the other?) Or perhaps members of the military, fed up with Hegseth putting American soldiers’ lives at risk—or angry about being fired for no reason—got wind of them. Or perhaps screenshots were simply shared to someone else by one or more members of the chat and eventually they spread to Times reporters.
The sheer number of possibilities is another demonstration of why you don’t conduct highly sensitive discussions on your personal cell phone. At least the Russians and the Chinese, and probably a half-dozen other nations, must be assumed to have a periscope into top American military communications at all times.
Donald Trump was a TV star, and he clearly is attracted to people who look good on television, particularly big-shouldered men with square jaws and good hair. The result of that is not hard to predict: government of, by, and for, morons.
