Pentagon Inspector General Report Not ‘Total Exoneration’ for Hegseth

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that he received “total exoneration” in an investigative report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General regarding a Signal group chat about a military attack in Yemen. But the report contradicts that assessment, concluding that Hegseth’s messages “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”

The inspector general report, issued Dec. 2 and publicly released two days later, also faulted Hegseth for using a personal cell phone to relay sensitive DoD information and for not retaining Signal conversations as official records, as required by federal law and Pentagon policy.

The chat between top administration national security officials on Signal, a private encrypted messaging app, came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to the group chat by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, who was later removed from his job. In one of the messages, Hegseth appeared to provide a timeline for impending U.S. military strikes in Yemen on March 15.