DOD Opens Investigation Into Pete Hegseth’s Use Of Signal

The acting inspector general for the Department of Defense said Thursday that he’s opened an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive military operations.

The action comes a week after a reporter for The Atlantic disclosed that he’d been inadvertently added to a group chat with Trump administration officials where they discussed sensitive details about an upcoming bombing campaign in Yemen.

Hegseth was notified via a memorandum from acting Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins, who said he was following through on a request from the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business.”

Stebbins said his office will also review whether the DoD’s use of the app complies with classification and records retention requirements.

The White House has repeatedly claimed that no classified information was shared in the war plan group chat, an assertion former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called “truly astounding.”

Hagel told CNN information of that sort “would ordinarily be classified for obvious reasons.”

“I mean, details of a strike ― a war strike ― that’s going to kill people, do damage. That’s the intent of it. I think that is classified information,” he added.

On Thursday, the scandal claimed its first jobs after President Donald Trump fired several senior members of the National Security Council at the advice of Laura Loomer.

In an Oval Office meeting the day prior, the far-right conspiracy theorist reportedly told Trump she believed the group text fiasco ― that began with Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz ― was somehow actually a foreign operation orchestrated by China.

Read the memo in full below: