Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing a sudden Pentagon investigation over leaked military strike plans shared through the encrypted messaging app Signal.
Officials say the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General is digging into whether Hegseth himself wrote the sensitive texts about U.S. military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, or if his staff typed them out. The key issue: how classified information from a secure military system ended up in a commercial app that the Defense Department had warned against using.
“Because this is one of the DOD IG’s ongoing projects, in accordance with our policy we do not provide the scope or details to protect the integrity of the process and avoid compromising the evaluation,” said DOD IG spokesperson Mollie Halperin, according to ABC News.
The messages appeared in two Signal chat groups. One included Vice President JD Vance and other top officials. The other was a private chat Hegseth set up on his personal phone that included his wife, Jennifer, who isn’t a government employee.
It’s not clear when the Pentagon will release its findings. Hegseth is expected to testify before Congress soon, where lawmakers—especially Democrats—are ready to question his handling of classified materials.
The leaks happened around mid-March, just as key Trump administration officials, including Hegseth, accidentally shared details of a missile strike in Yemen with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief.
Besides finding out who wrote and sent the messages, investigators are probing whether anyone was told to delete them. Under federal law, official communications must be saved. If messages were wiped, that could lead to serious legal trouble.
