The Trump administration is refusing to provide additional funds to cover Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unusually bloated personal security arrangements, according to a report.
Documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID), the agency tasked with protecting Defense Department officials, has been pleading for more money to cope with the intense strain caused by Hegseth’s expanded security details.
Hegseth reportedly demanded that hundreds of CID agents be reassigned from their usual roles investigating serious crimes within the Army to provide personal protective duty for the defense secretary and his family, including his former wives.
The Trump administration—which has made reducing federal spending one of its top priorities—has so far shown an “unwillingness” to do so, reported The Post.
Hegseth and his first wife, high school sweetheart Meredith Schwarz, divorced in 2009 after he admitted to having several affairs.
Hegseth’s second wife, Samantha Deering, filed for divorce in 2017, one month after her husband welcomed a child with Jennifer Rauchet, a Fox News producer who would become his third wife.
Hegseth and Deering’s divorce was finalized in 2018 after eight years of marriage amid reports of abusive behavior by him. The defense secretary’s former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, alleged in an affidavit that her sister was so scared of Hegseth that she once hid in a closet from him and had a code word among friends to indicate when she was in danger. Both Hegseth and Deering deny the claims.
Multiple CID officials also complained they are unable to carry out their normal investigative duties because of Hegseth’s unprecedented arrangements.
“I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy,” one official told The Post. “Nobody has.”
Under typical operations, about 150 of the CID’s 1,500 agents are assigned to VIP security details. Since Hegseth joined the Pentagon in January, officials said the number of agents on personal protective duty has jumped to “400 and going up,” with another source putting the figure at “over 500.”
One reason for the rapid increase is that agents are now tasked with guarding not only Hegseth and his current wife, Jennifer Hegseth, with whom he has one child and three stepchildren, but also his two former spouses and the three children he shares with Deering.
This has required CID agents to be dispatched for weeks at a time to locations such as Minnesota and Tennessee, where Hegseth’s second wife lives. One official vented to The Post that the assignments amounted to pulling investigators off cases just to “sit in the cars on the driveway.”
“It is literally taking away from [CID’s] law enforcement mission,” the official said. “You are taking hundreds of people out of the field to provide this level of protection.”
Hegseth’s personal choices have also strained the CID further. In July, for instance, he and his family attended a Washington Nationals baseball game but opted not to purchase seats in a private suite that would have been easier to secure, according to sources.
Instead, by sitting in a general section of the stadium without private access, the protective detail had to cover a larger and more exposed area, and were forced to frantically create a barrier while the group walked through a crowded concourse.
In a statement, a senior CID official told the Daily Beast that Hegseth has “never requested additional protection for his former spouses” nor has he ever “affected CIDs recommended security posture.”
The official added that the CID “operates within existing resource constraints” but that “specific details regarding threat assessments, security protocols, resource allocation, and budgetary matters related to either investigative or protective operations are considered sensitive and cannot be publicly disclosed.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell hit out at the report, telling the Daily Beast it is “astonishing” that The Post is “criticizing a high-ranking cabinet official for receiving appropriate security protection.”
“Any action pertaining to the security of Secretary Hegseth and his family has been in response to the threat environment and at the full recommendation the Army Criminal Investigation Division,” Parnell said.
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