Can Pete Hegseth keep his job? Insider reveals Pentagon is in ‘total chaos’ amid backstabbing and leaks

The Department of Defense is experiencing a “full-blown meltdown” under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, according to a recently resigned top Pentagon aide.

Following a month of “total chaos” at the Defense Department, from mass firings to leaked Signal chats featuring top officials within Donald Trump’s administration discussing bombing campaigns in Yemen, “there are very likely more shoes to drop in short order,” according to John Ullyot, who resigned last week as a top Pentagon spokesperson.

Last month, it was revealed that national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a Signal chat group with other top officials, including Hegseth, who shared details about military strikes in Yemen.

Hegseth also reportedly shared details about the imminent attack targeting Houthis in Yemen to a second group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.

According to Ullyot, Hegseth last week fired three top advisers and chiefs of staff, including a top aide who requested an investigation into Pentagon leaks, following February’s purge of top military officers, including the now-former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chief of naval operations.

In a statement, Hegseth’s now-former chief of staff Darin Selnick, senior adviser Dan Caldwell as well as the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, Colin Carroll, said they “are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended.”

“Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door,” they wrote last week.

Hegseth’s team has “developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door,” Ullyot wrote in Politico.

More firings are expected, according to Ullyot.

Chaos inside the Defense Department — which commands a roughly $850 billion budget while the United States is embroiled in global conflicts in a period of escalating tensions — “is now a major distraction for the president,” Ullyot wrote.

“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his officials to account,” he added. “Given that, it’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer.”

Bombing details revealed in Signal chats

Hegseth was facing calls to step down before he was even confirmed to the role, which oversees roughly 3 million service members and personnel.

The former Fox News personality promised to launch a “frontal assault” on top brass and to implement Trump’s vision of the U.S. military, joining the president’s suite of grievance-fueled loyalists whose disdain for a perceived establishment and a “woke” military aligns with Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to the government.

Hegseth also faced intense scrutiny over allegations of alcohol issues and sexual misconduct, with his own mother reportedly calling him an “abuser of women” in 2018.

After he was confirmed, Hegseth implemented a sweeping ban on transgender service members across the armed forces, which faced a series of lawsuits from decorated trans troops and LGBT+ groups. The directives have largely been blocked by court orders finding them plainly discriminatory.

Last month, The Atlantic published Jeffrey Goldberg’s explosive report detailing his inadvertent front-row seat to planning efforts from the Trump administration for a bombing campaign targeting Houthis in Yemen.

Waltz started a group chat on Signal with Vice President JD Vance, several Cabinet secretaries and other top White House officials, and appeared to accidentally add Goldberg.

That same month, Trump announced on social media that he ordered the military “to launch decisive and powerful” actions against the Yemeni group, which has blocked key shipping lanes and attacked Israeli vessels and other commercial ships in the Red Sea following Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

Goldberg revealed that Hegseth texted the group with a plan of action two hours before the bombs fell on March 15.

Hegseth contradicted the White House’s admission of the authenticity of the messages and sought to discredit The Atlantic and Goldberg instead.

“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes,” Hegseth told reporters last month. “This is a guy who peddles in garbage.”

Members of Congress call for resignations of administration officials, including Hegseth, for failing “security hygiene 101.”

Second Signal ‘defense’ chat includes wife and brother

Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hegseth brought his wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military officials.

One meeting at the Pentagon on March 6 involved high-level discussions between Hegseth and U.K. Secretary of Defense John Healey amid reports that the United States was cutting off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

She also reportedly joined a February meeting at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels.

The Brussels meeting on the sidelines of a conference of NATO defense ministers was part of a gathering of members with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group to discuss the production and delivery of weapons and other support for Ukraine. The meeting reportedly included the sharing of confidential information involving Ukraine at a time where the Trump and administration officials publicly clashed over the future of United States support during Russia’s assault.

Jennifer Hegseth was also reportedly included in another Signal chat with Hegseth and other Pentagon officials.

Unlike the Signal thread reported in The Atlantic, a chat labeled “Defense | Team Huddle” was created by Hegseth himself.

The chat did not include other cabinet-level officials. Instead, Hegseth included his wife; his brother Phil, a senior adviser and Department of Homeland liaison at the Pentagon; and attorney Timothy Parlatore, a former Trump lawyer who represented Hegseth and is now a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Hegseth and White House blame ‘disgruntled’ employees

Hegseth has repeatedly blamed the press for any suggestion there’s disorder inside the Pentagon while casting allegations that leaks are the work of disgruntled former employees.

“What a big surprise that a bunch of… a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax [and] won’t give back their Pulitzers — they got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies,” Hegseth said from outside the White House on April 21.

“This is what the media does,” he said. “They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insists that the president “stands strongly” behind Hegseth and suggested that the administration believes Pentagon employees are working “against” it.

“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” Leavitt told Fox & Friends on Fox News on April 21.

“Secretary Hegseth was nominated for this position because he is standing up for the war fighter — the men and women in uniform who are putting their lives on the line to protect our country and our homeland,” she added. “And unfortunately, there have been people at that building who don’t like the change the secretary is trying to bring, so they are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media.”