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The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Hegseth aide upended Pentagon leak inquiry with false wiretap claims
Days before Pete Hegseth fired three top aides last month over a Pentagon leak investigation into the disclosure of classified materials, according to four people familiar with the episode, a recently hired senior adviser said he could help with the inquiry. The adviser, Justin Fulcher, suggested to Hegseth's then chief of staff Joe Kasper and Hegseth's personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, that he knew of warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had identified the leakers. Fulcher offered to share the supposed evidence as long as he could help run the investigation, three of the people said. But when he sat down with agents over a week later, it became clear he had no evidence of a wiretap, and the Pentagon had been duped. The problem was that before investigators debunked the claims by Fulcher, who was previously found to have embellished his resume, the damage was done: Trump advisers had been told by Parlatore about 'smoking gun' evidence incriminating three aides, and Hegseth had already fired them. The Guardian revealed last month that there were unsubstantiated NSA warrantless wiretap claims underpinning the leak investigation, but its origin story and the involvement of Fulcher in the controversy has not been previously reported. Fulcher has said this account is not correct. In a statement, he said he never suggested there were NSA wiretaps or that he had access to wiretap records. 'I never approached Parlatore, Kasper or anyone else offering 'surveillance evidence' and did not ask to join an investigation on that or any other basis,' he said. The extraordinary episode adds to the growing portrait of dysfunction inside Hegseth's front office, which is involved in setting the direction of a department that has a budget of nearly $1tn and oversees more than 2 million troops around the world. The investigation prompted Hegseth to fire senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief Darin Selnick and the deputy secretary's chief of staff Colin Carroll, creating a leadership vacuum filled by Ricky Buria, the ex-junior military aide to Hegseth considered by the White House to be a liability. And with the implosion of the leak investigation adding to the fraught tensions among his aides, Hegseth is expected to face bruising questions about his ability to manage the Pentagon when he appears at a series of so-called defense posture hearings starting this week on Capitol Hill. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the reporting in this story. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Fulcher started at the Pentagon on the first day of the Trump administration as the lead staffer for Doge ('department of government efficiency'), armed with a top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance and a mandate from Elon Musk to oversee mass cuts at the defense department, the people said. The Doge team were given offices a few doors down from the defense secretary's offices, and when Fulcher first introduced himself to Hegseth's senior staff, he talked about having once worked for the NSA and how he had run various startups, the people said. The senior staff's relationship with Fulcher was collegial – unlike those of Doge staffers with other agencies, which were adversarial – and no one checked whether he had connections to the NSA. They also did not follow up on a Forbes article published in March that concluded he had embellished parts of his resume. Ironically, that close working relationship was initially the cause of his downfall after he was seen by Musk and the Doge leadership, including Steve Davis and spokesperson Katie Miller, as too close to the defense department and not willing enough to make drastic cuts, the people said. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion At the start of April, Musk replaced Fulcher as the Doge lead at the Pentagon. But Hegseth liked Fulcher, who had recently traveled with the secretary on an official trip to Panama, and Fulcher was brought on as a senior adviser. The details of Fulcher's responsibilities were not clear externally or internally, and he earned the nickname 'Disa' standing for 'director of suspicious affairs' – apparently a play on the acronym for the Defense Information Systems Agency. Around that time, Hegseth had ordered an investigation into the leaks, with the central focus being on the disclosure to a reporter of an allegedly top secret document that outlined options for Donald Trump to 'reclaim' the Panama canal, including with using US troops on the ground. It was not immediately clear why Fulcher chose to become involved in the investigation, but several days after he was let go as the Doge lead, he went to Kasper and expressed a willingness to help with the investigation, which Kasper attributed to him wanting to prove his worth, two of the people said. Kasper told Fulcher to go to Parlatore, who had been tasked with supervising and managing the investigation. When Fulcher approached Parlatore, he suggested that he knew of NSA intercepts supposedly showing that Caldwell had leaked using his personal phone, the two people said. Looking back on the chain of events, three people familiar with the conversations described Fulcher's claims as conveniently dovetailing with prevailing suspicions at the time about Caldwell printing lots of documents and his efforts to have the leak investigation shut down. Still, a cursory check at that stage into the NSA claims would have shown them to be false. Pentagon investigators concluded in the weeks after the firings that there was no authorized or unauthorized wiretap through the NSA, which is a component of the defense department. The claims were relayed to Hegseth and the White House as being accurate. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing the three aides had been fired as they 'leaked against their boss', while Hegseth predicted on Fox News they would be prosecuted although there has been no referral to date to the justice department.
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
White House stunned as Hegseth inquiry brings up illegal wiretap claims
The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap. The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks. But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth's personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation. The episode, as recounted by four people familiar with the matter, marked the most extraordinary twist in the investigation examining the leak of an allegedly top secret document that outlined options for the US military to reclaim the Panama canal to a reporter. The advisers were stunned again when Parlatore denied having told anyone about an illegal NSA wiretap himself and maintained that any information he had was passed on to him by others at the Pentagon. The leak was first attributed internally to Hegseth's senior adviser, Dan Caldwell, who was escorted out of the Pentagon and fired last month alongside two other aides, Hegseth's former deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick, and the deputy defense secretary's chief of staff Colin Carroll. But the illegal wiretap claim and Caldwell's denials fueled a breakdown in trust between the Pentagon and the White House, where the Trump advisers tracking the investigation have privately suggested they no longer have any idea about who or what to believe. In particular, one Trump adviser recently told Hegseth that he did not think Caldwell – or any of the fired aides – had leaked anything, and that he suspected the investigation had been used to get rid of aides involved in the infighting with his first chief of staff, Joe Kasper. The fraught situation is sure to increase pressure on Hegseth ahead of a Senate hearing next month, and more broadly for his office, which has been roiled by the leak investigation that has now continued for nearly a month with no new evidence or referral to the FBI. The fallout has left Hegseth with no chief or deputy chief of staff, as he relies on six senior advisers to run his front office, which is involved in setting the direction of the defense department that has a budget of nearly $1tn and oversees more than two million troops. And while Hegseth's former junior military aide Ricky Buria has effectively assumed the job of the chief of staff, the White House has blocked Hegseth from giving him the job permanently on account of his limited experience and role in internal office drama. The Pentagon declined to comment on reporting for this story. A spokesperson for the White House said in a statement: 'President Trump is confident in the secretary's ability to ensure top leadership at the Department of Defense shares their focus on restoring a military that is focused on readiness, lethality, and excellence.' The skepticism among the Trump advisers is widely seen as a product of several developments that started shortly after the suspensions of Caldwell and Selnick on 15 April, followed by the suspension of Carroll on 16 April, according to seven people familiar with the matter. After the aides were fired on 18 April and issued a joint statement denying wrongdoing, the White House received its first briefing on the firings. At that juncture, a handful of Trump advisers in the West Wing and elsewhere were told there was evidence that Caldwell had printed a document on US military plans for the Panama canal classified at the top secret level, took a photo, and sent it to an reporter using his personal phone. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion But the advisers grew uneasy in the ensuing weeks after Caldwell appeared on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's podcast, denouncing their firings as the product of internal office politics at the Pentagon and alleging that the investigation had become weaponized against them. They also then learned of a rumor at the Pentagon that Air Force office of special investigations (OSI), which had been working the case for weeks beforehand, had possibly identified the leaked Panama canal document by virtue of the fact that it was a draft that lacked certain details that were in the final version of the document. As the rumor went, the document had led Air Force OSI to focus its investigation on mid-level aides who worked in the US Southern or Central Command or for the joint chiefs of staff, and had not been told to focus on the activities of the three aides until the weekend after they had been fired. It was not immediately clear whether the the rumor was correct or even from where it emerged. But it appears to have spurred the White House to press Parlatore to disclose the evidence against Caldwell, including how the Pentagon knew what was on his phone. At first, Parlatore rebuffed the attempts to obtain the underlying evidence, noting it was inappropriate for the executive branch to insert itself into an ongoing criminal investigation that he said could still yield charges. But towards the end of April, according to what the Trump advisers shared inside the White House, Parlatore suggested that there had been a warrantless wiretap on Caldwell's phone. Parlatore has denied making such a claim when confronted by associates, and has generally maintained during the investigation that he has only passed along information briefed to him by others. Reached by phone on Monday, Parlatore referred questions to the Pentagon press office. Still, the Trump advisers who reeled from the claim also eventually told Hegseth they were concerned by the optics of Parlatore, who had been close to the former chief of staff Kasper, running an investigation that targeted Kasper's perceived enemies in the office. The warrantless wiretap episode was not formally resolved. The investigation was transferred to deputy defense secretary Stephen Feinberg's office around the time that Parlatore had planned to step away to prepare for the trial of another client, Adm Robert Burke, on federal bribery charges. Parlatore remains a close confidant of Hegseth and he retained his ability to make recommendations in the investigation, according to two people familiar with the situation. Commissioned by Hegseth as a commander in the navy reserve, he is subject to the uniform code of military justice and cannot be directly fired.
