In April, the Defense Department launched an investigation into a series of leaks, including plans involving U.S. aircraft carriers in the Middle East and efforts to retake the Panama Canal. The probe led to the Pentagon firing Hegseth’s senior adviser, Dan Caldwell; deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick; and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense. Caldwell has publicly maintained that he was framed as the source of the leaks.
Per the Guardian, Trump advisers were recently told “that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.” This explanation “alarmed” the advisers, who flagged the allegations to Vice President JD Vance, concerned that an illegal wiretap “would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.” You don’t say!
Advisers ultimately determined the allegations were untrue… but the Guardian reports that, according to its sources, “the White House has lost confidence” in the Pentagon’s ability to investigate itself. Trump advisers reportedly don’t believe that the aides Hegseth fired are the individuals responsible for the leaks in question.
The Guardian also reported that at least one Trump adviser accused Hegseth of firing the aides not because they leaked information, but because of “infighting” with Hegseth’s former chief of staff, Joe Kasper. Currently, Hegseth has no chief of staff or even deputy chief of staff, instead, he’s “[relying] on six senior advisers to run his front office” and oversee the Pentagon’s $11 trillion budget. In June, Hegseth will attend a hearing concerning the Pentagon’s ongoing struggles with leaks and secure communications. Surely that hearing will go swell!
Mind you, all of this comes after Hegseth has been caught in not one but two major security scandals for sharing highly classified information over Signal, an unauthorized communications platform. In one case, Hegseth allegedly shared this information with civilians, including his wife. Yet, Hegseth has somehow managed to keep his job—a job I’d very much argue he never should have been hired for. The alleged wiretapping and egregious national security violations are obviously embarrassing and disqualifying enough, but before all of that, some of the first information we learned about the ex-Fox News host is that he’s showed up to almost every job he’s held in the last decade drunk and that he’s an alleged rapist and domestic abuser. It doesn’t help that his own colleagues in Trump’s cabinet are openly questioning his leadership.
There is a part of me that’s shocked by how patently awful Hegseth is at… everything. But there’s a bigger part of me that isn’t. If anything, I’d be more surprised if a raging alcoholic, flaming racist TV talking head were good rather than bad at his job.
