It’s been several months since a cohort of officials from the Trump administration established a Signal group chat to deliberate on classified military intel in anticipation of a military operation in Yemen, inadvertently admitting a journalist into the conversation, and now the Pentagon’s inspector general has made its findings public regarding the situation. The outcomes of Steven Stebbins’ eight-month investigation revealed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not adhere to DoD guidelines by “utilizing an unauthorized commercially available messaging platform to communicate nonpublic DoD details.”
The report also indicated that he posed a potential risk of exposing “sensitive DoD details” as a result, but only suggested a review of classification processes, mentioning that another report called for “corrective actions” that, if carried out and followed, would align with the department’s standards.
The 84-page report, accessible in full here, indicates that Hegseth personally responded to the inquiry with a statement in July asserting that he shared “unspecified general information” regarding the strike and declined requests for an interview.
The investigation also had to depend on accounts from the journalist who was included in the chat, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, as its auto-delete feature limited their ability to recover all the discussions.
We requested that the DoD provide a copy of the Secretary’s communications on Signal around
March 15, 2025. The DoD furnished a partial compilation of messages from the Secretary’s personal phone,
including some messages previously reported by The Atlantic, but other messages were automatically deleted due to chat settings. Hence, we had to partially rely on the publicly posted transcript of the chat shared by The Atlantic (“Houthi PC Small Group”) for a complete record.
In a tweet released Wednesday night, Hegseth asserted that the report indicated “No classified information. Complete exoneration.” However, Armed Services Committee member Sen. Mark Kelly from Arizona informed reporters today that “It stated he was in violation of certain DOD regulations…so whether that constitutes breaking the law, one must figure that out.”
