OAN Staff Blake Wolf
1:41 PM – Wednesday, April 2, 2025
The Pentagon’s acting inspector general revealed on Thursday that he will investigate whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated department policy after sending “attack plans” in the leaked Signal chat.
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A memo from Inspector General Steven Stebbins revealed that the investigation will look into whether Hegseth’s discussion over Signal was in “compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business. Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” Stebbins wrote.
The investigation was requested by GOP Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democrat Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
The content of the private chat was leaked to the public after National Security Advisor Mike Walz inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic into the group chat which included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, among others.
Throughout the chat, Hegseth discussed attack plans, although he has maintained that the chat did not contain classified information.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package) 1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) – also, Strike Drones Launch (M1-9s) 1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets),” Hegseth wrote throughout the chat.
“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military discussions in Yemen,” wrote Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) in a joint letter addressed to Stebbins.
“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss classified and sensitive information,” it continued.
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