According to The New York Times, defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of an upcoming military strike against the Houthi group in Yemen during a second Signal chat with his wife and brother.
According to the paper, details such as flight schedules for the warplanes involved were shared in a group chat on March 15.
The claims follow shocking revelations last month that senior administration figures, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, discussed the upcoming strike on Signal, a commercial messaging platform, rather than using the high-security communications systems available to them.
The story came to light after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was accidentally added to the chat.
According to new reports, Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, was part of a second Signal group chat about the Yemen attack, which also included his brother Phil.
Jennifer Rauchet has accompanied her husband on official trips, and Phil Hegseth works for the Department of Defense, but it is unclear why either of them was involved in the planning of the airstrikes.
The New York Times also reports that Pete Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, was present in the group chat. For its reporting, the paper cites four people who were familiar with the chat.
When asked by the newspaper whether Hegseth shared detailed attack plans, a US official declined to comment, stating that there was “no national security breach.”
“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before the confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official told the newspaper. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”
Hegseth created the Signal group “Defense | Team Huddle” and reportedly posted in it around the same time he shared the same information in Waltz’s Signal group, according to people familiar with the group chat.
The defense secretary also accessed the Signal chat through his personal phone, according to the newspaper.
In the days leading up to the Yemen attack, aides reportedly warned Hegseth not to discuss sensitive operational details in the “Defense | Team Huddle” group chat. He was also “encouraged” to transfer discussions from his personal device to his government phone. “But Mr. Hegseth never made the transition,” the Times reports, citing sources familiar with the Signal chat.
According to the Times, the chat included Hegseth’s senior advisers, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, who were recently fired for allegedly leaking unauthorized information. The couple denied the allegations in a joint statement posted on social media over the weekend.
Other members of the chat, in addition to Hegseth’s wife and brother, “were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation,” according to the outlet.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a former United States Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs while on combat duty in Iraq and now serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for Hegseth’s resignation.
“How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he is not only a f***ing liar, he is a threat to our national security?” Duckworth wrote in a post on X. “Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth claimed. “He must resign in disgrace.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged President Donald Trump to fire Hegseth. “Details keep coming out. “We keep learning how Pete Hegseth endangered lives,” Schumer responded in a post on X. “But Trump is still too weak to remove him. Pete Hegseth should be fired.
The Defense Department’s acting inspector general is currently looking into the original Signal chat, which included Goldberg by accident.
In a letter to Hegseth earlier this month, Steven Stebbins stated that he will investigate whether the defense secretary violated any rules governing the sharing of classified information.
It is unclear whether Stebbins discovered the reported second Signal chat before the Times published its report.
Last month, reports surfaced that Hegseth brought his wife to two meetings with foreign military officials.
According to multiple people who were either present or were aware of the discussions, sensitive information was discussed in both meetings, one with U.K. officials and the other with NATO defense ministers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
His wife was said to have attended a March 6 meeting at the Pentagon with Britain’s Secretary of Defence, John Healy, and Admiral Tony Radakin, the head of the United Kingdom’s armed forces.
Beyond the Signalgate scandal, Trump has been repeatedly accused of mishandling classified information. In 2023, he was charged criminally after the FBI discovered thousands of secret papers at his Mar-a-Lago home, some of which were stacked in a bathroom.
Trump pleaded not guilty, and Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case. Although then-special counsel Jack Smith appealed her decision, the case was concluded when Trump was re-elected president in November 2024.
Months after taking office in his first term, Trump shared classified Israeli intelligence with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting. Despite the uproar, Trump insisted he had every right to do so.
In 2019, Trump tweeted a classified satellite image of a failed Iranian rocket launch to his millions of followers, claiming it was his “absolute right.”