Pentagon watchdog probes if staff deleted Hegseth's Signal messages

Euronews

a day ago

The Pentagon's watchdog is looking into whether any of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's aides were asked to delete Signal messages that may have contained sensitive military information that was shared with a reporter, according to two people familiar with the probe and documents reviewed by The Associated Press (AP).
The Inspector General of the Defence Department's request focuses on how information about the 15 March US air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen came to be shared on the messaging app.
Besides finding out whether anyone was asked to delete Signal messages, the inspector general is also asking some past and current staffers who were with Hegseth on the day of the strikes who posted the information and who had access to his phone.
Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans have said that the information Hegseth posted to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets could have put the pilots' lives at risk and that for any lower-ranking members of the military it would have led to their firing.
Hegseth has said none of the information shared was classified.
But current and former military officials have said there is no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been cleared to share on an unsecured device.
"I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans," Hegseth told Fox News in April after reporting emerged about the chat that included his family members.
"I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterise it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That's what I've said from the beginning."
News of the imminent probe comes as Hegseth is scheduled to testify before Congress next week for the first time since his confirmation hearing.
He is likely to face questions under oath not only about his handling of sensitive information but also the wider turmoil at the Pentagon following the departures of several senior aides and an internal investigation over information leaks.
Hegseth has already has faced questions over the installation of an unsecured internet line in his office that bypassed Pentagon security protocols and revelations that he shared details about US military strikes in multiple Signal chats.
One of the chats included his wife and brother, while the other included President Donald Trump's top national security officials and, inadvertently, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson made no comment on Friday, citing the pending investigation.
The inspector general's office didn't immediately respond to a request from the AP for comment.
US President Donald Trump has made clear that Hegseth continues to have his support, saying during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia that the defence secretary "went through a lot" but "he's doing really well."
Hegseth has limited his public engagements with the press since the Signal controversy. He has yet to hold a Pentagon press briefing and his spokesperson has briefed reporters there only once.
The inspector general is investigating Hegseth at the request of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and the committee's top Democrat, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked and is not approved for carrying classified information.
On 14 March, one day before the US strikes in Yemen, the Defence Department cautioned personnel about the app's vulnerability.
Trump has said his administration targeted the Houthis over their "unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence and terrorism."
He noted the disruption Houthi attacks caused through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, key waterways for energy and cargo shipments between Asia and Europe through Egypt's Suez Canal.
The Houthis attacked more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, between November 2023 until January this year.
Their leadership described the attacks as aimed at ending the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza.
'Time to drop the really big bomb: Trump is in the Epstein files," Elon Musk posted on the social media platform X on Thursday in a move that could potentially sever his close friendship with US President Donald Trump.
From key ally to the US president to arch enemy almost overnight, Musk has fallen out with Trump over the president's "Big Beautiful Bill".
Musk, who funded Trump's election campaign and led the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has just recently departed the agency and the Trump administration, as he increasingly publicly criticised what he said was a "disgusting abomination" that will "burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.'
Following a series of tweets on the matter, Musk went so far as to accuse Trump without providing evidence of being included in the infamous files — which Trump himself demanded be released, as they purportedly contain the names of a number of high-profile political and business figures in the US and abroad linked to a sexual exploitation scheme involving minors.
Trump, whose administration promised to release the Epstein Files, has rejected Musk's allegations, telling reporters Musk had "lost his mind". There is no evidence of his participation in illegal activities with Jeffrey Epstein.
An influential US financier, Epstein came under significant public scrutiny after he was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in the early 2000s, but wound up serving just 13 months in jail.
He was indicted on federal charges in New York in 2019, more than a decade after he secretly struck a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of similar charges of sex trafficking.
The case has drawn widespread attention because of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell's links to royals, presidents and billionaires. Maxwell herself is the daughter of the late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, who once owned the New York Daily News.
Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein's criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.
In January 2024, a court unsealed the final batch of a trove of documents that had been collected as evidence in a lawsuit filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.
Much of the material, including transcripts of victim interviews and old police reports, had already been publicly known.
They included mentions of Trump, former US President Bill Clinton, Britain's Prince Andrew and magician David Copperfield, as well as testimony from one victim who said she met Michael Jackson at Epstein's Florida home, but nothing untoward happened with him.
The previously released files included a 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted spending several hours with Epstein at Trump's Atlantic City casino.
However, the documents did not state whether she had actually met Trump or accused him of any wrongdoing.
Trump and Epstein have been friends since the late 1980s, when both men were part of the socialite circles in New York. Over the years, the two have partied at Mar-a-Lago, a Palm Beach estate that Trump purchased in 1995, and attended a Victoria's Secret show together.
The US president has said in the past that he thought Epstein was a 'terrific guy,' but that they later had a falling out in 2004, reportedly over a botched real estate deal.
"He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side," Trump told New York Magazine in 2002.
Trump has since said he "wasn't a fan" of Epstein. According to media reports, since Epstein's sexual exploitation ring became public, Trump offered support and provided evidence against his once-friend.
Epstein did not hold back since the two fell out, either.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff last year released tapes of interviews with Epstein, in which he called the US president 'functionally illiterate' and a "horrible human being".
The US president's team has rejected allegations of any connection between the two in recent years, stating Wolff — whose tapes showed Epstein knew some details of the inner workings of the first Trump administration between 2017 and 2021 — was "a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies".
Musk has also been connected to Epstein. Like Trump, in 2014, he was photographed with Epstein's partner Maxwell at a party.
Epstein died in apparent suicide in August 2019 while awaiting trial on criminal charges at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
The US Justice Department's Inspector General said that his suicide was the end result of 'combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures' by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons and jail workers.
The watchdog report found no evidence of foul play.
Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking related to her role in Epstein's abuse and exploitation scheme. She lost her appeal in September 2024.
While the US president has faced multiple sexual assault accusations in the past, he has rejected all allegations as part of media bias or political smear campaigns.
In December 2024, a judgment was upheld against Trump for defamation and sexual abuse of writer E Jean Carroll in 1995 or 1996. The sentencing carried a penalty of $5 million (€4.4m).