Hegseth Gave Signalgate Probe Little as Possible—and Still Got Wrecked

The Office of the Inspector General’s Signalgate report is out, and it does not fully exonerate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, regardless of his supporters’ claims.

Hegseth overwhelmingly declined to cooperate with the OIG’s report on his early-term scandal, refusing to hand over the personal phone he used to make war plans over Signal and refusing to sit for an interview. Nonetheless, the report found that Hegseth not only violated the DOD’s protocol about using personal devices for sensitive information, he also endangered the lives of American troops in the process.

“We concluded that the Secretary sent sensitive, nonpublic, operational information that he determined did not require classification over the Signal chat on his personal cell phone,” the 84-page report reads.

Hegseth also sent messages on Signal detailing “the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory” just hours before the strike on the Houthis. “Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives,” the OIG continues.

In his defense, Hegseth claimed in a written statement that his Signal messages contained “non-specific general details which I determined, in my sole discretion, were either not classified, or that I could safely declassify.” And yet one of the messages the IG obtained literally reads, “THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.” Others include exact timestamps of attacks. That all sounds extremely specific.

“If this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report says. “Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”

Framing this as a “full exoneration,” of Hegseth, as Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell did Wednesday, is laughable when the phrase “the Secretary did not comply with” followed by a specific DOD protocol is in the report at least eight different times. And yet Hegseth and the administration are acting as if he is being somehow unfairly attacked for planning a bombing over Signal as the head of the Defense Department. This, frankly, should have been an automatic firing.

Read the full report here.

After 83 people have lost their lives in dubiously legal boat strikes in the Caribbean, some prominent Republican senators seem to finally be ready to part ways with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth’s Pentagon was revealed to have levied a second strike against a boat in September in order to kill two survivors of the first attack. The strike, which could be considered a war crime, may be the last straw for Hegseth.

On Thursday, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Armed Services Committee, said he had no problem with Hegseth’s conduct regarding the Signal chat where he inadvertently shared classified information about a military operation to a reporter—but stopped short of backing Hegseth completely.

When asked by CNN reporter Manu Raju if he had concerns about Hegseth’s leadership after a watchdog’s report on Signalgate, Wicker said, “We’re continuing to get the facts, but based on this particular allegation, which is now several months old, I think the secretary is in a pretty good position on that.”

“Do you have confidence in him? Would you say that? Could you say if you do?” Raju asked, as Wicker walked away.

Wicker said nothing, and continued down the hall.

Republican Senator Mike Rounds also stopped short of backing the embattled defense secretary, saying that he needs more information to make a call. “We’ll make our decisions based on the facts of the case; we haven’t got the facts yet in front of us in a classified setting,” he told Forbes reporters on Thursday.

Leading members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees heard testimony Thursday from Hegseth’s chosen scapegoat for the second boat strike, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley. At least one lawmaker left that hearing appalled.

Hegseth has claimed that he was not in the room when the double-tap strike was conducted, but that Bradley was following his orders and acted appropriately.

But Thom Tillis, a key Republican senator, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Wednesday that Hegseth simply claiming to be out of the room isn’t enough to exonerate him.

“I’ll take at face value right now what Secretary Hegseth said: He said he wasn’t there, he said he was busy doing other things,” Tillis said. “I would assume a part of the record was—what was the other thing that he was doing that was more important than a battle damage assessment over the first strike in the Caribbean?”

Tillis also stood by his claim that whoever was responsible for the second strike should be out of a job. “If someone knowingly launched a second missile at that boat, which led to the deaths of the other two, then they have to be held accountable and they shouldn’t be in whatever role they’re in,” he told Collins.

Five years after pipe bombs were found near the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters, the FBI has arrested a suspect.

On Thursday morning, Virginia resident Brian Cole was taken into custody by the bureau and charged with placing the bombs on January 5, 2021, the day before Congress was to certify the 2020 presidential election. Some supporters of Donald Trump, who lost to Joe Biden, had other ideas, mounting a riot and insurrection at the Capitol building.

The bombs were placed between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. the night before the Capitol insurrection but weren’t discovered until 15 hours later. While the bombs did not detonate, they were viable devices that could have seriously injured or killed bystanders. Multiple conspiracy theories about the bombs have proliferated online, including that they were meant to distract law enforcement from responding to the unrest at the Capitol.

Two people familiar with the arrest told MS NOW that Cole has been linked to statements supporting anarchism, but no motive has yet been determined. Solving the pipe bomb case has long been a fixation of FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, even before he was appointed to the bureau. As a right-wing commentator and podcaster, Bongino claimed that the FBI was covering up information about the case.

Others on the right, including current FBI Director Kash Patel, have posited that the bombs were an “inside job,” and last month, a right-wing website claimed the suspect was a Capitol Police officer. The arrest may not put those conspiracy theories to bed, as taking five years to solve a rather important case let them proliferate.

The FBI visited over 1,200 residences and businesses, conducted more than 1,000 interviews, combed through 39,000 video files, and examined over 600 tips about the pipe bombs in its long investigation. Maybe now that a suspect has been arrested, the public will have more answers about one of the darkest days in U.S. history.

Lawmakers were shocked and appalled Thursday after they were shown video footage of the September 2 double tap that killed two survivors of an airstrike in the Caribbean.

Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley met behind closed doors with members of the House and Senate in an attempt to defend the Trump administration’s decision to slaughter two individuals who clung to the wreckage of their boat. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine was also in attendance at the meeting.

Ahead of the meeting, military attorneys claimed that there could be a legitimate explanation for the second strike if Bradley was able to prove the survivors posed a credible threat to U.S. military personnel. But the footage supposedly left no room for doubt that that was not the case.

“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. “You have two individuals [in] clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, [who] were killed by the United States.”

Himes added that, based on his understanding of the Pentagon’s explanation, the survivors were “not in the position to continue their mission in any way.” He noted that Bradley had “confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter,” according to CBS News.

Senator Jack Reed was similarly upset by the classified briefing, telling reporters in a statement that he was “deeply disturbed” by what he saw.

“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump Administration’s military activities, and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested—and been denied—fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation. This must and will be the only beginning of our investigation into this incident,” Reed wrote, adding that the Defense Department must release the “complete, unedited footage” of the airstrike.

Even Republican Senator Rand Paul was incensed by the footage and demanded that it be released. “I think if the public sees images of people clinging to boat debris and being blown up, I think that there is a chance that finally, the public will get interested enough in this to stop this,” he told The Independent reporter Eric Michael Garcia.

He also demanded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testify before Congress, and even called out some of his colleagues’ reticence to do anything about the strikes. “I think that Congress, if they had any kind of gumption at all would not be allowed administration to summarily execute people that are suspected of a crime,” he said.

But not everyone that attended the briefing seemed to walk away with the same understanding. Despite the clarified details, Republican Senator Tom Cotton argued that “the first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2nd  were entirely lawful and needful,” and that the sequential attacks were “exactly what we’d expect our military commanders to do.”

Since early September, the United States has destroyed at least 20 small boats traversing the Caribbean Sea that Trump administration officials have deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs. At least 83 people have been killed in the attacks.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human advocates alike, including the U.N. human rights chief, who said in October that the strikes “violate international human rights law.” The needless deaths have also pushed congressional Republicans to consider whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be stripped of his position altogether.

Donald Trump, however, is still backing Hegseth. The president has so far brushed off the widespread anger at his Defense Department pick, telling inquiring reporters Wednesday that “this is war.”

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump has given a full and unconditional pardon to entertainment executive Tim Leiweke—whom his own Justice Department indicted on charges of “orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for an arena at a public university” in Austin.

The pardon is dated Tuesday.

Leiweke was charged in July of this year. “As outlined in the indictment, the Defendant rigged a bidding process to benefit his own company and deprived a public university and taxpayers of the benefits of competitive bidding,” assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater said at the time. Leiweke faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. He pleaded not guilty.

In a statement following Trump’s pardon, Leiweke said, “This has been a long and difficult journey for my wife, my daughter, and me. The President has given us a new lease on life with which we will be grateful and good stewards.”

This comes alongside Trump’s pardon for Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, whom the Biden Justice Department previously charged with allegedly accepting roughly $600,000 in bribes from an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan’s government and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.

Cuellar’s and Leiweke’s pardons show that Trump has no qualms about white-collar crime. He may not even see it as a legitimate crime at all. He pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road CEO who was serving a life sentence on charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and money laundering. He pardoned Las Vegas city councilwoman and state lawmaker Michele Fiore, who was convicted of seven counts relating to wire fraud and using government funds for her own plastic surgery. He pardoned former Culpeper County, Virginia, Sheriff Scott Jenkins, who was convicted of taking more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for deputy appointments.

These are just a few of the shady business folk Trump has pardoned at whim. Only time will tell just how many more of them get off scot-free before his term is up.