Pentagon investigators are looking into whether Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally wrote the text messages detailing the military’s plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen or whether other staffers typed out those details, according to two people familiar with the ongoing probe.
The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General has spent several weeks interviewing Hegseth’s current and former staff members to figure out how United States strike details taken from a classified system wound up in a commercial messaging app known as Signal.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers a speech at the US cemetery to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings, June 6, 2025 in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy.
Thomas Padilla/AP
“Because this is one of the DOD IG’s ongoing projects, in accordance with our policy we do not provide the scope or details to protect the integrity of the process and avoid compromising the evaluation,” DOD IG spokesperson Mollie Halperin told ABC News.
The details were relayed in two chat groups that included Hegseth – one with Vice President JD Vance and other high-ranking officials, and a second one that included Hegseth’s wife, who is not employed by the government.
It remains unclear how soon the findings will be released. Hegseth is scheduled to testify for the first time as defense secretary on Tuesday, where Democratic lawmakers are expected to question his handling of classified and sensitive information.
The sharing of the details reportedly occurred around the same time in mid-March when key members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including Hegseth, inadvertently shared details about the March 15 missile strike in Yemen with the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
Much of the same content was shared in the second encrypted chat with family members and others — a chat group that Hegseth had created on his personal phone during his confirmation process that included his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, the two officials told ABC News.
In addition to looking at whether the information was classified and who wrote it, investigators are also asking whether any staff members were asked by Hegseth or others to delete messages, according to one person familiar with the IG probe.
The government is required under law to retain federal communications as official records.
