It’s been months since a group of Trump administration officials put together a Signal group chat to discuss classified military intelligence ahead of a military strike in Yemen while inadvertently involving a journalist, and now the Pentagon’s inspector general has released his report on the impropriety. The results of Steven Stebbins’ eight-month-long investigation found that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not comply with DoD policies by “using an unapproved commercially available messaging application to send non-public DoD information.”
It also said that as a result he raised the risk of potential compromise of “sensitive DoD information”, but only recommended a review of classification procedures, and said that another report recommended “corrective actions” that, if implemented and followed, would comply with department requirements.
The 84-page report, available in full here, shows that Hegseth himself responded to the investigation in July with a statement saying he had shared “non-specific general details” about the strike, and declined interview requests.
The investigation also had to rely on the reporting of the journalist added to the chat, atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, because its auto-delete function only made it possible for him to retrieve some discussions.
We requested that DoD provide a copy of the Secretary’s communications on or regarding Signal
March 15, 2025. DOD provided partial copy of messages from secretary’s personal cell phone,
It also includes some messages that were previously reported by The Atlantic, but other messages were automatically removed.
Chat settings. Therefore, we had to rely on a transcript of the chat (“Houthi PC Small Group”) publicly posted by The Atlantic for the full record.
In a tweet posted Wednesday evening, Hegseth claimed the report showed, “No classified information. Complete exoneration.” However, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a member of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters today that “it says he was violating some DOD regulations… so whether it’s breaking the law, you’ll have to figure out.”
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