As the nation reels over Pete Hegseth allegedly giving direct orders to carry out heinous war crimes, we are now being reminded of the defense secretary’s other big scandal from earlier in the year: when he was caught texting secret war plans about launching airstrikes in Yemen in an unsecured group chat while totally oblivious to the fact that a journalist was in there reading everything.
That context is important, though the latest embarrassing detail to emerge from the “Signalgate” scandal comes not from Hegseth but his vice president and charisma black hole JD Vance. As spotted by The New Republic, in the same group chat at the center of all that drama, Vance sent a bizarre late-night text just hours after it was exposed by The Atlantic for being a stunning violation of national security.
“This chat’s kind of dead,” Vance sent at 2:26 am. “Anything going on?”
No one responded, according to a screenshot of the chat taken on March 27, two days after Vance sent the message.
If it was meant to be a joke, it bombed. While Vance was making wise cracks, the others, like treasury secretary Scott Bessent, were covering their tracks by changing their display names and the chat’s settings so messages disappeared more quickly.
The strange text was brought to light in a long-awaited report released Thursday by the Pentagon inspector general, the findings of which confirmed what everyone already suspected: that Hegseth’s use of the Signal app to discuss bombing Houthi forces in Yemen violated security protocols and endangered troops in the field.
The former Fox News personality and Army national guardsman has repeatedly downplayed the allegations. When The Atlantic first reported on the group chat, Hegseth insisted to reporters that “Nobody was texting war plans.”
The Signal chat proved to just be the tip of the iceberg. On top of accidentally leaking stuff to a journalist in the Yemen chat, he also discussed bombing the country in another group chat that had his wife and brother. He also reportedly used the same phone that he conducted official top secret business on to peruse social media sites and try his hand at sports gambling.
Hegseth refused to hand over his phone or be interviewed for the investigation. Instead, he provided a written statement explaining why he didn’t actually leak classified information — his excuse being, in a nutshell, that he’s the one who decides what’s classified or not in the first place.
“I retain the sole discretion to decide whether something should be classified or whether classified materials no longer require protection and can be declassified,” Hegseth told the inspector general in July. “On 15 March 2025, at 1144ET, I took non-specific general details which I determined, in my sole discretion, were either not classified, or that I could safely declassify, which I then typed into the Signal chat.”
More on Signalgate: Pentagon Issued Warning About Signal Messaging One Week Before Its Head Was Caught Using It
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