US President Donald Trump vouched for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the New York Times reported that he shared additional war plans in a separate Signal chat.
“He is doing a great job,” Trump told reporters on Monday, adding that reporters can "ask the Houthis" about Hegesth's job performance.
“[Hegseth] was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that’s what he’s doing,” he said, as reported by the Washington Post. “So you don’t always have friends when you do that.”
Other senior administration officials publicly rallied around Hegseth after the report, which outlined how he shared strike plans on the Houthis in Yemen in group chats that included members of his personal entourage, such as his wife and brother.
'Leakers' to blame for report, WH says
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Hegseth "is doing phenomenal leading the Pentagon."
“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change you are trying to implement," she told Fox News on Monday.
Trump, Leavitt, and Hegseth have blamed the New York Times report on employees who leaked information.
On the day of the report, Hegseth called the president, who in turn blamed the report on disgruntled “leakers", the NYT reported, citing a person knowledgeable about the call.
The report said that Trump told Hegseth that he had his back, and that he also had plenty of experience dealing with leaks.
After the call, the president instructed his staff to publicly back Hegseth.
This comes after the NYT reported that he had shared details of a March attack on Yemen's Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
Hegseth had shared the same strike details of the attack that were revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat on the Signal app by mistake.
In other news of leaks, officials serving both under former US President Joe Biden and US President Donald Trump erroneously publicized classified information to thousands of federal employees, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The information was shared in a Google Drive folder by General Services Administration (GSA) employees with the whole GSA workforce, according to the report. Among the data made privy to the over 11,200 staff were potentially confidential White House floor plans and particulars for a proposed armored door for the White House visitor center.
On Sunday, Politico published an opinion piece by John Ullyot, Hegseth's recently departed spokesman, who argued that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”
NPR reported on Monday that the administration was starting to look for alternatives for Hegseth, but the White House said this was "fake news."
Reuters contributed to this report.
