United States President Donald Trump has come to the defence of Pete Hegseth after he found himself in another Signal group chat leak.
This time round, the Defence Secretary shared details of the military attack in a chat, including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, according to an anonymous official.
At an Easter Monday press conference, Trump backed Hegseth, saying he’s been doing a great job and said that he has “great confidence” in him.
"Everybody's happy with him,” Trump said.
"Are you bringing up Signal again? I thought they gave that up two weeks ago. It's the same old stuff from the media," he said. "Try finding something new," he said.
Hegseth also denied his wrongdoing at a conference on Easter Monday.
"This is what the media does, they take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people, ruin their reputation. It's not going to work with me," he said.
The new Signal leak comes just a month after the editor and chief of The Atlantic was added to a Signal group chat where U.S. cabinet officials, including Hegseth discussed plans to attack Houthi rebels.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X to deny that there has been an effort to replace Hegseth.
“This @NPR story is total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about,” she said.
“As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind @SecDef.”
This also comes as three other Pentagon advisers, Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick were escorted out of the Pentagon under accusations of leaking information to the press.
"All three of us served our country honorably in uniform — for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, based on our collective service, we understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it," they wrote in a joint statement.
