The Pentagon's inspector general announced on Thursday that it has launched an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's involvement in Signalgate. Hegseth shared detailed attack plans in a Signal group chat with senior Trump administration officials on March 15.
However, the chat mistakenly included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who later made the messages public. Hegseth has since rubbished all the claims. "The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business," the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General revealed in a Thursday memo.
Hegseth Being Investigated
Last month, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and ranking member Jack Reed (D-RI) urged the Pentagon's watchdog to launch an investigation into the Signalgate debacle.
Hegseth has refuted claims that he shared "war plans." Senior intelligence officials in the Trump administration, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, said that Hegseth would have been responsible for determining whether the information he posted in the leaked Signal chat was classified.
This came as Trump fired several members of his National Security Council team on Thursday amid the Signal group chat leak where top administration officials were discussing a planned strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
Trump has stood by Waltz, a former congressman from Florida, in the wake of the Signal chat mishap, despite some White House insiders reportedly calling him a "f***ing idiot."
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported Thursday morning that far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office on Wednesday and pushed for the firings of National Security Council members.
Loomer arrived at the White House with research that allegedly indicated certain NSC staff members were not loyal enough to the president.
"Out of respect for President Trump and the privacy of the Oval Office, I'm going to decline on divulging any details about my Oval Office meeting with President Trump," Loomer told the Daily Mail on Thursday.
Signalgate Gets Dirtier
According to The Times, Waltz attended the meeting and stood up for his team members. "NSC doesn't comment on personnel matters," was the official line from NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes.
However, CNN reported on Thursday that those fired included Brian Walsh, Thomas Boodry, and David Feith.
The network claimed the firings were a direct outcome of Trump's meeting with Loomer, despite the fact that Trump's key congressional ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, had previously tried to distance Loomer from the MAGA movement. However, Loomer has remained influential in Trump's circle.
The fired staffers included Walsh, an intelligence director who formerly worked for now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Boodry, Waltz's former congressional legislative director who later became a senior director for legislative affairs; and Feith, who oversaw technology and national security and had served in the State Department during Trump's first term.
