According to The New York Times, defense secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed specifics of a planned military operation against the Houthi organization in Yemen during a second Signal discussion with his wife and brother.
According to the report, facts such as flight itineraries for the jets engaged were communicated in a group chat on March 15.
The claims follow shocking revelations last month that senior administration figures, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, discussed the upcoming strike on Signal, a commercial messaging platform, rather than using the high-security communications systems available to them.
The tale came to light after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was unintentionally included to the discussion.
According to fresh reports, Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, was part of a second Signal group discussion discussing the Yemen attack, which also included his brother Phil.
Jennifer Rauchet has accompanied her husband on official travels, and Phil Hegseth works for the Department of Defense, but it is unclear why any of them was involved in the planning of the airstrikes.
The New York Times also states that Pete Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, was present in the group conversation. For its story, the paper quotes four people who were familiar with the talk.
When asked by the newspaper whether Hegseth disclosed precise attack plans, a US official declined to answer, stating that there was “no national security breach.”
“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before the confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official told the newspaper. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”
Hegseth created the Signal group “Defense | Team Huddle” and apparently posted in it at the same time he shared the same information in Waltz’s Signal group, according to persons familiar with the group chat.
The defense secretary apparently accessed the Signal discussion through his personal phone, according to the publication.
In the days leading up to the Yemen raid, aides reportedly advised Hegseth not to divulge key operational specifics in the “Defense | Team Huddle” group chat. He was also “encouraged” to transfer discussions from his personal mobile to his government phone. “But Mr. Hegseth never made the transition,” the Times reports, citing sources familiar with the Signal chat.
According to the Times, the talk featured Hegseth’s senior aides, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, who were recently sacked for allegedly sharing illegal information. The couple rejected the allegations in a joint statement released on social media over the weekend.
Other users of the chat, in addition to Hegseth’s wife and brother, “were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation,” according to the site.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a former United States Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs while on combat duty in Iraq and now serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for Hegseth’s resignation.
“How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f***ing liar, he is a threat to our national security?” Duckworth wrote in a post on X. “Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth claimed. “He must resign in disgrace.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged President Donald Trump to remove Hegseth. “Details keep pouring out. “We keep learning how Pete Hegseth endangered lives,” Schumer said in a post on X. “But Trump is still too weak to remove him. Pete Hegseth should be sacked.
The Defense Department’s acting inspector general is currently looking into the original Signal chat, which included Goldberg by accident.
In a letter to Hegseth earlier this month, Steven Stebbins stated that he will investigate if the defense secretary violated any laws governing the release of classified material.
It is unknown whether Stebbins discovered the supposed second Signal chat before the Times published its piece.
Last month, reports surfaced that Hegseth accompanied his wife to two meetings with foreign military officers.
According to many persons who were either there or were aware of the discussions, classified information was shared in both sessions, one with U.K. officials and the other with NATO defense ministers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
His wife was claimed to have attended a March 6 meeting at the Pentagon with Britain’s Secretary of Defence, John Healy, and Admiral Tony Radakin, the leader of the United Kingdom’s armed forces.
Beyond the Signalgate controversy, Trump has been regularly accused of mishandling classified information. In 2023, he was charged criminally after the FBI discovered thousands of secret files in his Mar-a-Lago residence, some of which were stored in a bathtub.
Trump pleaded not guilty, and Judge Aileen Cannon dropped the case. Although then-special counsel Jack Smith challenged her ruling, the lawsuit was concluded when Trump was re-elected president in November 2024.
Months after assuming office in his first term, Trump revealed secret Israeli intelligence with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting. Despite the backlash, Trump argued he had every right to do so.
In 2019, Trump tweeted a secret satellite photograph of a failed Iranian rocket launch to his millions of followers, claiming it was his “absolute right.”
