Latest news with #KingsleyWilson
Arab News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Pentagon watchdog investigates if staffers were asked to delete Hegseth's Signal messages
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon's watchdog is looking into whether any of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's aides were asked to delete Signal messages that may have shared sensitive military information with a reporter, according to two people familiar with the investigation and documents reviewed by The Associated Press. The inspector general's request focuses on how information about the March 15 airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen was shared on the messaging app. This 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 already has faced questions over the installation of an unsecured Internet line in his office that bypassed the Pentagon's security protocols and revelations that he shared details about the 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 included The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson had no comment Friday, citing the pending investigation. The inspector general's office would not discuss the details of the investigation but said that when the report is complete, their office will release unclassified portions of it to the public. Besides finding out whether anyone was asked to delete Signal messages, the inspector general also is 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, according to the two people familiar with the investigation and the documents reviewed by the AP. The people were not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. 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 those 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 was classified. Multiple current and former military officials have said there is no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been OK to share on an unsecured device. 'I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,' Hegseth told Fox News Channel 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 characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That's what I've said from the beginning.' 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 defense 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 spokesman 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, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and the committee's top Democrat, Sen. 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 March 14, one day before the strikes against the Houthis, the Defense Department cautioned personnel about the vulnerability of the app. Trump has said his administration targeted the Houthis over their 'unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence and terrorism.' He has 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 Houthi rebels 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 the Gaza Strip.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Appalling': Pentagon press secretary faces calls to resign over antisemitic posts
'This is a person who truly seems to be steeped in the most horrifying corners of the internet,' says Chris Hayes on Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson's social media posts parroting neo-Nazi and Russian propaganda.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jewish groups condemn deputy Pentagon press secretary over X post
The American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned deputy Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson over social media posts they described as antisemitic. 'Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office,' the American Jewish Committee wrote in a Wednesday post on the social platform X. 'Kingsley Wilson, newly appointed @DepPressSecDOD, is clearly unfit for her role,' they added. The comments from the committee and ADL come after Wilson criticized the ADL for their decision to condemn the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who the ADL says was falsely convicted for the murder of a 13-year-old in 1913. 'Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime,' Wilson wrote in August of last year. 'The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you,' she continued. The organization did not respond to her comments publicly but did condemn her post as a 'false conspiracy theory,' urging her to retract the remarks. 'We are deeply disturbed that any public official would parrot these hateful and false conspiracy theories and we hope Kingsley Wilson will immediately retract her remarks,' the ADL said in a statement to Jewish Insider when asked about her posts. The White House and the Pentagon did not respond to The Hill's requests for comment. Wilson has denounced the Pentagon's decision to send troops to Lebanon in an effort to ease tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, and she blasted the Biden administration for their financial support of Ukraine in their war against Russia. She has also urged the U.S. to stay out of 'foreign ethnic conflicts.' Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have disapproved of Wilson's rhetoric online. 'I'm not gonna tell them who to hire, but I do know that Trump doesn't believe any of the things she's talking about, and I'll leave it up to them to determine if they think she's the right spokesperson,' Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Politico. 'If what you say about these posts are true, then she's completely off-script with President Trump,' he continued. Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) described Wilson's words as 'historical revisionism.' 'Kingsley Wilson, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Defense, is shamefully attempting to delegitimize Kosovo, which has been the single greatest American ally in the Western Balkans,' Torres wrote on X. 'No amount of historical revisionism can change the fundamental fact that Kosovo is and will always be an independent democracy.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
06-03-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Jewish groups condemn deputy Pentagon press secretary over X post
The American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned deputy Pentagon press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, over social media posts they described as antisemitic. 'Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office,' the American Jewish Committee wrote in a Wednesday post on the social platform X. 'Kingsley Wilson, newly appointed @DepPressSecDOD, is clearly unfit for her role,' they added. The comments from the committee and ADL come after Wilson criticized the ADL for their decision to condemn the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who the ADL says was falsely convicted for the murder of a 13 year old in 1913. 'Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime,' Wilson wrote in August of last year. 'The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you,' she continued. The organization did not respond to her comments publicly but did condemn her post as a 'false conspiracy theory,' urging her to retract the remarks. 'We are deeply disturbed that any public official would parrot these hateful and false conspiracy theories and we hope Kingsley Wilson will immediately retract her remarks,' the ADL said in a statement to Jewish Insider when asked about her posts. The White House and the Pentagon did not respond to The Hill's requests for comment. Wilson has denounced the Pentagon's decision to send troops to Lebanon in an effort to ease tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in addition to blasting the Biden administration for their financial support of Ukraine in their war against Russia. She has also urged the U.S. to stay out of ' foreign ethnic conflicts.' Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have disapproved of Wilson's rhetoric online. ''I'm not gonna tell them who to hire, but I do know that [President Donald] Trump doesn't believe any of the things she's talking about, and I'll leave it up to them to determine if they think she's the right spokesperson,' Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Politico. 'If what you say about these posts are true, then she's completely off-script with President Trump,' he continued. Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) described Wilson's words as 'historical revisionism.' 'Kingsley Wilson, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Defense, is shamefully attempting to delegitimize Kosovo, which has been the single greatest American ally in the Western Balkans,' Torres wrote on X. 'No amount of historical revisionism can change the fundamental fact that Kosovo is and will always be an independent democracy.'
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pentagon press secretary has a ‘long history' of bigoted social media posts and now faces calls to resign
A Pentagon press secretary with a 'long history' of bigoted and antisemitic social media posts faces calls to resign. Jewish organizations have blasted the appointment of Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, who compared the murders of Israeli infants during the October 7 Hamas attacks to abortion. She has also peddled the antisemitic conspiracy theory about Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who was wrongly convicted and hanged for the murder of a 13-year-old Georgia girl in 1951. The 26-year-old MAGA supporter, whose father is longtime Trump advisor and right-wing commentator Steve Cortes, joined the Pentagon's press office in January. A review of her social media activity by the outlet Mother Jones revealed 'a long history of bigoted, xenophobic, and deliberately provocative' posts. In one post, Wilson supports the racist, xenophobic and long-debunked Great Replacement theory — the idea that there is a plot to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants, Mother Jones reported. A post falsely claiming that Frank, 'raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl' and 'tried to frame a Black man for his crime' remained on Wilson's personal X account. Wilson was responding to a post last year by the Anti-Defamation League that marked the anniversary of Frank's lynching 'by a hate-filled mob in Georgia after being falsely accused & unjustly convicted of murder in a trial marred by antisemitism.' 'Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office,' Jewish civil rights group the American Jewish Committee, posted in a statement Wednesday. 'Kingsley Wilson, newly appointed @DepPressSecDOD, is clearly unfit for her role.' The Independent has contacted Wilson and the Department of Defense for comment. Republican and Democratic lawmakers also rebuked Wilson's posts. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wilson was 'completely off-script' with President Donald Trump. 'I'm not gonna tell them who to hire, but I do know that Trump doesn't believe any of the things she's talking about, and I'll leave it up to them to determine if they think she's the right spokesperson,' Graham told Politico. Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska told the outlet that Wilson's remarks were 'horrible' and 'just not appropriate.' 'Sometimes people think they're anonymous when they're on social media, that they can comment or post on whatever may be their attitude at the time, and then they later regret it,' the Republican said. Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres called Wilson out for a post she wrote about Kosovo at the end of February, signaling her support for Russia. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. 'Kingsley Wilson, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Defense, is shamefully attempting to delegitimize Kosovo, which has been the single greatest American ally in the Western Balkans,' the congressman wrote on X. 'No amount of historical revisionism can change the fundamental fact that Kosovo is and will always be an independent democracy.' Unvetted appointments such as Wilson's at the Pentagon have raised red flags for some GOP members. 'We've got enough real, serious challenges from outside without having to worry about Pentagon staff who like to spread antisemitism or Russian propaganda,' a senior Republican congressional aide told Politico on the condition of anonymity. 'I'm amazed at who this administration has been willing to trust with national security responsibilities.'
