US President Donald Trump is behind Pete HegeSeth, a spokeswoman for the White House, Karoline Leavitt, said on Monday, after reporting the defense secretary shared the details of the March attack on Iran Houthis in Iran in a group that covered his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
“The president absolutely has confidence in the secretary of HegeSeth. I talked to him (Trump) about this this morning, and he stands behind him,” Leavitt told reporters.
HEGETH Revelations used an unplasified message signal to provide very sensitive security details for the second time at a delicate time, because higher officials were removed from the Pentagon last week as part of an internal leakage.
In the second chat, HegeSeth shared the details of the attack similar to those revealed last month by the Atlantic magazine after its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat in the Signal application, said Reuters on Sunday.
The second chat included a dozen people and was created during the HegeSeth confirmation process in order to discuss administrative problems and not detailed military planning. Among them was the brother of HegeStha, who is a connector of the Internal Security Department to the Pentagon.
Leavitt said HegeSeth did not provide any classified information about any of the signals.
On Monday, talking to reporters in the White House, HegSeth said: “I talked to the president and we intend to continue the fight on the same side.”
The National Security Team of the Trump Administration still denies that any classified information has been disclosed after the publication of the entire transcription of the signal application group chat, which revealed American officials discussing the raids against Yemen.
The last revelation comes a few days after Dan Caldwell, one of the leading advisers of HegeSeth, was escorted from the Pentagon after identifying during the investigation into leaks in the US Department of Defense.
Caldwell played a key role for HegeSeth and was named by the secretary of Pentagon in the first signal chat.
“We are incredibly disappointed in the way our service ended in the Department of Defense,” Caldwell published on Saturday on Saturday, earlier on Twitter. “Nameless officials of the Pentagon stunned our character with unfounded attacks going out through the door.”
After the departure of Caldwell, less higher officials of Darin Selnick, who recently became the deputy chief of staff of HegeSetha, and Colin Carroll, who was the chief of staff of the deputy secretary of defense Steve Feinberg, stayed on administrative leave and released on Friday.
John Ullyot, a former pentagon spokesman who gave way last week, criticized the Pentagon leader in the opinion of the Politico magazine published on Sunday. Ullyot accused the HegeSetha team, who disseminated the unverified claims of the three best officials who were released last week, falsely accusing them of wiping confidential information on the media.