Signalgate: Hegseth Group Chat Being Investigated By Pentagon Watchdog

Welp, it looks like letting a journalist into the war room Signal group chat isn’t going away as quickly as Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz want. The acting Inspector general of the Defense Department has launched an investigation into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of classified information on an unauthorized messaging app. 

According to CNN, Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins announced Thursday that they are looking into not just how The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the chat but why military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen last month were being discussed on Signal. 

The probe is to find out whether Hegseth and other Pentagon personnel involved in Signalgate followed “…DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business.”

Stebbins is also investigating whether Hegseth “complied with classification and records retention requirements,” CNN reports. “The review will take place both in Washington, DC and at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.”

In case you’ve not been watching the news (I don’t blame you), Signalgate started after Goldberg was accidentally added to a war room group chat on the Signal messaging app that spoke of bombing a terrorist group in Yemen. Goldberg then wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.” The Trump administration tried to push back against the story, claiming that none of what Goldberg said was true. Then, they admitted that they were lying after Goldberg released a second piece titled, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.”

All of it was quite messy, and now, it’s led to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee requesting a review of how it all went down and why Hegseth and his office would think that they could discuss military strikes over the Signal messaging app.  

From CNN:

The information Hegseth disclosed in the Signal chat, including the exact timing of strikes against the Houthis and the kinds of aircraft and weapons systems that would be used, was highly classified at the time he wrote it, CNN has reported. Hegseth shared the information with the group, which included the vice president and the national security adviser, 30 minutes before the operation began, the texts released by The Atlantic showed.

Top US officials have said the information shared in the text messages was not classified, and Hegseth’s spokesperson Sean Parnell also denied that any classified information was shared.

“These additional Signal chat messages confirm there were no classified materials or war plans shared,” Parnell said last week. “The Secretary was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway and had already been briefed through official channels. The American people see through the Atlantic’s pathetic attempts to distract from President Trump’s national security agenda.”

Stebbins has requested material from Hegseth for him and his staff to review. CNN notes that Stebbins is a President Trump appointee who was given that position after the president fired Robert Storch, “along with more than a dozen other inspectors general at federal agencies in the first few weeks of the Trump administration.”

This is interesting, considering Trump fired inspector generals who were not loyalists to his administration, which means that this “investigation” might not actually net anything because it’s akin to asking the police to police themselves. 

SEE ALSO:

Trump ‘War Group Chat’ Includes Journalist By Mistake

Mike Waltz, Fresh Off Signalgate, Has A New Scandal On His Hands

Read more