President Trump said he believes Secretary of War Pete Hegseth when he says he didn’t order military forces to leave no survivors in a strike on a boat from Venezuela that was thought to be involved in drug trafficking.
“He said he did not say that, and I believe him 100%,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, again reaffirming his support for Hegseth while downplaying Democratic talking points that Hegseth should resign.
A senior adviser to Hegseth says the forthcoming Pentagon inspector general report on the so-called “Signalgate” matter does not conclude that Hegseth shared classified information while texting about planned strikes against Houthi targets — and instead is expected to fault improper cellphone practices by former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Navy Reserve Commander Tim Parlatore, an attorney and adviser to Hegseth, told Just the News, No Noise on Wednesday that the report by Pentagon inspector general Steven Stebbins — which has been sent to Congress and is expected to be released publicly on Thursday — “totally exonerates” Hegseth.
Parlatore also said the report details broader reliance on the Signal messaging app among national security officials during the Biden administration, the outlet reported.
“You’re going to see that it totally exonerates Pete Hegseth,” Parlatore said. “There is no classified material in those texts. Everything he declassified — that he has within his authority to declassify.”
“Classified information — did he violate that, did he put out classified information? And the answer is no. Totally exonerated,” he added.
“There is a tiny little section in there that is really untethered from the rest of the report where the investigator states their opinion that having this information out there on an unclassified could have endangered the troops,” Parlatore also said. “But the problem is it is completely untethered from the rest of the report. It doesn’t cite to a single source, not to a single document, not to a single interview, because it is not something that the IG was investigating.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and a frequent critic of President Trump, published a story in March titled, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
According to the article, Goldberg was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat by a user identified as “Mike Waltz,” who was serving as national security adviser at the time. T
he chat included War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and other national security officials, Just the News added.
Messages attributed to Hegseth, sent shortly before U.S. military action, reportedly contained details about planned March 15 strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.
The strikes were later carried out as part of Operation Rough Rider, a campaign in which U.S. Central Command said more than 800 targets were hit over several weeks earlier this year.
Multiple news outlets, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that the Pentagon inspector general’s review found Hegseth had violated military regulations.
Parlatore said the watchdog’s report does not conclude that Hegseth shared classified information, but he noted that it includes new findings related to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the broader use of the Signal messaging app during the Biden administration.
“That’s actually another big part of this report — is it talks about how the use of Signal, it’s not a Pete Hegseth issue, it’s not a Trump administration issue, it’s a whole-of-government issue,” Parlatore said. “The use of Signal has proliferated ever since 2020.”
Parlatore added: “This report actually notes that the former secretary, Lloyd Austin, actually used to bring his personal cell phone into the office, into the SCIF, in violation of the law. And that was something that was passed down to Secretary Hegseth when he took over, and he said, ‘well, I’m not going to do that,’ and he wanted to do it a different way because he wanted to comply with the law.”
Parlatore stated on Wednesday that when Hegseth learned about Austin’s alleged cell phone practices, he expressed a desire not to follow the same path.
He went on to say that Hegseth tasked his Pentagon team with finding him a secure way to use the app while in a secure setting that also complied with the law.
“I don’t want to do what Lloyd Austin did. I don’t want to break the law. Give me something that’s legal and secure,” Parlatore said when characterizing Hegseth’s thinking.
