Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, used his personal phone to send information on US military operations to Yemen to a 13 -person signal group, including his wife and brother, two sources knowing the affirmed case at NBC News.
He did it after an assistant warned him of being careful not to share sensitive information on an unsecured communication system before the Yemen operation, the sources said.
Development occurs about a month after it became public that HegSeth shared details on strikes in Yemen in a separate signal conversation with senior administration officials. The editor -in -chief of the Atlantic was wrongly added to this chain.
The New York Times first reported the existence of the second signal cat.
Times cited four anonymous sources. Some of them reported the Times, said the information Hegseth had sent to the second cat – such as the FO -8 flight calendar used – seemed to be similar to the information he had shared in the cat reported by the editor -in -chief of the Atlantic. A source confirmed it to NBC News.
Sean Parnell, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense-in-Chief, denied that Hegseth had shared classified information. “There was no classified information in any signal chat,” he said on X.
Anna Kelly, assistant press secretary of the White House, played the meaning of the second group cat.
“Regardless of the number of times the inherited media try to resuscitate the same non-history, they cannot change the fact that no classified information has been shared,” she said in a statement.
Thirteen people were in the second cat in the signal group, but no other person responsible for the office was included, both sources said.
The participants included Joe Kasper, the HegSeth chief of staff; Darin Selnick, his assistant chief of staff; Eric Geressy, retired army sergeant and HegSeth’s advisor; Tim Parlatore, legal advisor of Hegseth and commander of the navy in the general’s advocate judge; Hegseth’s Hegseth’s brother, HegSeth’s main advisor for the Department of Internal Security; And Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, according to two sources.
In March, the editor -in -chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was wrongly added to a signal conversation with several national security leaders, on which Hegseth shared operational plans to grasp military targets in Yemen before they occur. This cat is now the subject of an investigation by the Inspector General of the Ministry of Defense.
In both cases, Hegseth used his personal phone, rather than his official, said both sources.
Hegseth was examined last month after it was revealed that his wife, a former producer of Fox News, attended sensitive meetings of the Department of Defense with British leaders and NATO. Jennifer Hegseth is not an employee of the Pentagon.
Hegseth’s brother Phil is employed in the Pentagon as an advisor to the HegSeth Ministry of Internal Security – but it is not clear why him or Jennifer Hegseth should know or be aware of information on military strikes in Yemen.
Recent Pentagon tirver
The Ministry of Defense experienced an intense rotation rate last week. Two of the best HegSeth advisers, Dan Caldwell and Selnick, were escorted from the Pentagon at the beginning of last week as part of an investigation into the allegations of a leak of sensitive information.
The official who announced the investigation into the supposed flight weeks ago, HegSeth’s chief of staff Joe Kasper left his role at the Pentagon at the end of last week, Politico reported. And Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the assistant defense secretary, was also forced at the end of last week.
Caldwell, Selnick and Carroll declared in a joint social media statement on Saturday saying that they were not the subject of an investigation, saying: ”
Democrats reacted quickly to Sunday news. The head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, Dn.y., posted on X that Hegseth “must be dismissed”.
“The details continue to go out,” said Schumer. “We continue to learn how Pete Hegseth has endangered. But Trump is still too low to dismiss him. ”
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the best democrat of the intelligence committee, said on X: “The last story on the negligence of Pete Hegseth with sensitive information is another alarming example in the uninterrupted incompetence model of this administration. 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 work is another day that the life of our troops is threatened,” she said.
