Neo-cons, war hawks, and media activists REALLY don't like Pete Hegseth.
Remember this story?
Yeah, well, after that debacle, The New York Times is doubling down with another hit piece directly aimed at SecDef himself:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.
Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.
Essentially, this is the exact same story all over again.
The New York Times makes a big deal of Hegseth's brother and his lawyer being in the chat, but the paper admits that they both work for the Pentagon. Since these materials weren't confidential, this part of the story really feels like a non-scandal.
Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, did not respond to several requests for comment before this article was published.
After it was published, Mr. Parnell responded on social media. 'Another day, another old story — back from the dead,' he wrote. 'There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story.'
The "gotcha" that The Times is going for is the fact that the chat group was created before Hegseth's confirmation and included his wife and members of his personal braintrust ... and it claims he was on his personal phone when he shared these messages.
Mr. Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Mr. Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.
Mr. Hegseth shared information about the Yemen strikes in the 'Defense | Team Huddle' chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior U.S. officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Mr. Hegseth's chat group said.
Here was Hegseth's reply to the hit piece:
I'll let you sift through the data to come to your own conclusions about the handling of sensitive/classified information and the accuracy of the NYT's reporting.
I'll just note that a LOT of people in the military-industrial complex hate Pete Hegseth. The guy is a Christian warfighter who identifies with the troops, not the suits who make money selling bombs. TRILLIONS of dollars in Pentagon contracts are at risk right now, especially as disruptors like Palantir and Anduril have become serious competitors at the table.
And, well, the traditional way to get rid of a bureaucrat who is a financial risk to your business is to unleash a smear campaign in a paper of record!
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