Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has rejected the Pentagon watchdog’s investigation of his actions in sending sensitive attack plans over the Signal messaging app in March, calling the independent inquiry “a political witch hunt.”
In a statement to The Hill on Wednesday, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell claims without evidence that details of the Defense Department Inspector General’s (DOD IG) inquiry — started in April after Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee requested it do so — were leaked to the media by “Biden administration holdovers.”
“This Inspector General evaluation is clearly a political witch hunt by Biden administration holdovers as evidenced by [the] fact that they’ve already started leaking to the failing New York Times,” Parnell states.
He also reveals for the first time publicly that Hegseth has provided a statement to the DOD IG “which points out why this entire exercise is a sham, conducted in bad faith and with extreme bias.”
The response comes after The Washington Post last week reported that the Pentagon watchdog was told the messages Hegseth sent to at least two unsecure Signal chats regarding the U.S. plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen came from an email labeled “SECRET/NOFORN.”
The attack plans had initially been shared with more than a dozen Defense officials via a classified email sent over a classified system by U.S. Central Command head Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, according to the Post.
Hegseth has come under intense scrutiny for posting the details of the plans in the unclassified Signal group chat directly before Washington launched its attacks on March 15. He also shared the information in a separate chat that included his wife, brother and personal attorney.
Invoking the words “witch hunt” takes a page out of President Trump’s playbook when it comes to hitting back at public scrutiny, often seen as a method to delegitimize findings that contradict his administration’s viewpoint.
But the IG review began after Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) requested the inquiry, making it difficult for the Trump administration to dismiss it as a Democrat-led attack.
The watchdog report, anticipated in the next several weeks, is expected to find whether Hegseth and his team correctly followed Pentagon policy in using commercial messaging applications for official business.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has repeatedly and adamantly claimed that no classified information was shared in the Signal group chats, which were revealed because the editor in chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently added to one.
DOD IG spokesperson Mollie Halpern declined to comment to The Hill on the review, citing its long-standing policy that bars the watchdog from doing so while a case remains open.
