Ongoing investigations into leaks at Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense have led to mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House, per a new report from The Guardian.
Last month, three high-level Pentagon staffers were removed from their posts due to their suspected involvement in leaks surrounding military plans to retake the Panama Canal. All three men denied any wrongdoing in a joint statement. An investigation into the firings unearthed an even more alarming detail: the aides had been outed by a warrantless wiretap.
Unnamed White House advisers who spoke with the Guardian said they raised the issue with aides close to Vice President JD Vance, only to find that the wiretap story was bunk. The outlet said the advisers "complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore," the man in charge of the leaks investigation.
The Guardian reports that wiretap claims have harmed the credibility of Hegseth's office, saying the back-and-forth "fueled a breakdown in trust between the Pentagon and the White House," where Trump advisers "no longer have any idea about who or what to believe." One adviser reportedly told Hegseth that he didn't believe a word of the Cabinet member's justifications for the firings, alleging that the former Fox News host cooked up the story to win an intra-office struggle.
Trump’s national security team has been awash in controversies throughout the early months of his second term. Hegseth and others famously discussed classified war plans for Yemen in a group chat that included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, a scandal that became known as “Signalgate.” The Defense head allegedly sent classified military plans in a separate chat channel that included his wife and brother.
A spokesperson for the White House told The Guardian in a statement that “President Trump is confident in the secretary’s ability to ensure top leadership at the Department of Defense shares their focus on restoring a military that is focused on readiness, lethality, and excellence.”
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