Pentagon’s Signalgate report finds Pete Hegseth violated military policies

It has been months since a radical of Trump medication officials put unneurotic a Signal radical chat to sermon classified subject quality up of a subject onslaught successful Yemen portion inadvertently adding a journalist, and present the Pentagon’s inspector wide has released its study connected the mess. The results of Steven Stebbins’ eight-month-long probe recovered that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not comply with DoD policies by “using a nonapproved commercially disposable messaging exertion to nonstop nonpublic DoD information.”

It besides said that helium risked imaginable compromise of “sensitive DoD information” arsenic a result, but lone recommended a reappraisal of classification procedures, and said that different study recommended “corrective actions” that, if implemented and adhered to, would comply with the department’s requirements.

The 84-page report, available successful afloat here, shows that Hegseth himself responded to the probe with a connection successful July that said he’d shared “nonspecific wide details” astir the strike, and declined interrogation requests.

The probe besides had to trust connected reporting from the writer added to the chat, The Atlantic exertion successful main Jeffrey Goldberg, arsenic its auto-delete relation lone made it imaginable for them to retrieve immoderate of the discussions.

We requested that the DoD supply a transcript of the Secretary’s communications connected Signal connected oregon about
March 15, 2025. The DoD provided a partial transcript of messages from the Secretary’s idiosyncratic compartment phone,
including immoderate messages that The Atlantic antecedently reported, but different messages had auto-deleted because
of chat settings. Therefore, we had to trust successful portion connected the transcript of the chat The Atlantic posted publically (“Houthi PC Small Group”) for a afloat record.

In a tweet posted Wednesday evening, Hegseth claimed the study showed “No classified information. Total exoneration.” However, Armed Services Committee subordinate Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona told reporters today that “It said helium was successful usurpation of immoderate DOD regulations…so whether that’s breaking the law, you got to fig that out.”