The knives continue to be out for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
NPR, that bastion of exclusive Trump White House gets, is reporting Hegseth may be on his way out. They are claiming Donald Trump is looking for a replacement, which the president is denying. Now, why would NPR have a scoop like that about the Trump administration not matched by Fox News or any other outlet? Ask yourself that.
The Leaks
Here’s how we got here: Someone at the Pentagon has been leaking to the press about very serious – even top-secret – matters, like the NBC News report last month revealing the White House had directed the Pentagon to draw up options to increase American troop presence in Panama to advance the president’s goal of reclaiming the Panama Canal. What was that doing on NBC News?
The March 13 report was very specific and cited “two US officials familiar with the planning,” who said “U.S. Southern Command is developing potential plans from partnering more closely with Panamanian security forces to the less likely option of U.S. troops’ seizing the Panama Canal by force.”
The Department of Defense began investigating those leaks and made it known in the press that they would be using polygraphs to get to the bottom of who was behind them. Now, as with any time a threat like that makes its way into the public eye via the news, one has to wonder if they were really going to polygraph everyone or rather were just setting some sort of a trap (e.g. the first person to complain about the polygraph is likely someone you want to look into).
In the course of that investigation, Hegseth wound up firing three of his top aides. Those fired included some who had been close to him before he became secretary, like top advisor Dan Caldwell, who worked with Pete at Concerned Veterans for America for some nine years.
Also fired? Deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the Pentagon’s deputy secretary. A fourth staffer, press aide John Ullyot, also parted ways with the Pentagon, supposedly because he didn’t want to be second in command of the comms shop. But there are some real sour grapes with this guy.
He ran to Politico to say it has been “a month of total chaos at the Pentagon… from leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings.” He wrote “the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president” and predicted Hegseth will be fired by President Trump. Almost immediately after the op-ed was published, Donald Trump Jr. took to X to clarify Ullyot is not “America first” even though he claims to be and is officially exiled from the movement.
The Motive
The three alleged leakers, however, remain a bit of a mystery. Why would Pete’s top aides – including his friend Dan Caldwell – allegedly leak to NBC News about alleged war plans involving the Panama Canal? And there were other leaks too, like that Elon Musk went over to the Pentagon. It wasn’t just the one, but this one would be top secret.
All we know for sure is that Dan Caldwell appears to be part of MAGA’s more noninterventionist wing. That is fine. That is probably, in large part, how Trump won the 2024 election. I think the Republican Party, in general, has had it with the forever wars and the more bellicose nature of some in the party. So, there is nothing wrong with Dan Caldwell feeling that way, and he does appear to feel that way.
But the question is: Was that view abhorrent to the people who fired him? Caldwell seems to think so. He went on Tucker Carolson’s podcast Monday night with his first remarks since he got the ax and suggested he was forced out – not because he leaked anything to any member of the press (which he denies doing) but because he is anti-war with Iran due to his experiences in Iraq. Here’s some of what he said:
CALDWELL: …It started really pushing me to where I’m at now on foreign policy. We need to do something differently. And it kind of radicalized me in a certain way on this and really there’s an argument that… when you’re talking about foreign policy, you kind of need to be cold and detached, like some people say that realists need to be cold and detached. I don’t necessarily buy that. But you know, when I hear about launching a new military operation or somebody talk about something, my first thought is: What’s it gonna be like for the guys? What’s gonna be like for the boys that are going to be in the front?
That implies Hegseth – or those who suggested to him that Caldwell be fired – feel differently than Caldwell does. But I can tell you myself from many conversations with Pete over the past six months that he is far from a neocon. He was much more pro-war – as much of the Republican Party was – back during the George W. Bush years.
He left Princeton University to go fight. He was in that mindset like most of us were post-September 11. But much like Caldwell, he has had a serious change of heart thanks to his service at GITMO and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Honestly, President Trump is the one making the most noise about bombing Iran, and Pete’s job is to do what President Trump tells him. Remember this from Trump’s interview with Fox News in February?
TRUMP: …You cannot allow Iran, or just about anybody else, by the way, but especially Iran, because they are very militant. I mean, they’re very, very militant. You can’t allow them to have a nuclear weapon, but there’s two ways of stopping them: With bombs or with a written piece of paper… I think Iran would love to make a deal, and I would love to make a deal with them without bombing them…
Trump hasn’t taken military action against Iran off the table.
The Investigation
We can confirm, based on our own reporting, that Caldwell did not have his phone searched, nor was he polygraphed before he was escorted out of the Pentagon last week. He told Tucker that as well. But we do have to point out that those are not the only ways one can be discovered as a leaker.
One of the ways they used to track confidential information at my old law firm, for example, was to make everybody log in before they could print a document. That is just one possible way of finding a leaker, not to mention one’s desktop computer records, or email records, or possible intra-office comms between loose-lipped staffers.
So with all due respect to Caldwell, it doesn’t really answer the question definitively to say they didn’t take his phone and they didn’t give a polygraph before they fired him. We don’t know what they did at the Pentagon that led them to believe Dan Caldwell and those two others needed to go, and we have more questions like:
- Will Caldwell and these other two turn over their phones voluntarily to the Pentagon?
- Will the other two come forward and offer their own defenses?
- Will these three voluntarily return any laptops or other electronics given to them by the Pentagon?
- Will they allow the Pentagon to search their personal laptops?
All of this can be obtained rather easily by a warrant, which may well be heading their way. Because while Caldwell told Tucker he would likely already be under arrest if he had been caught leaking, the truth is that oftentimes they fire suspected leakers while investigations are underway because they don’t want them to have ongoing access to confidential information. If and when they have enough evidence to charge the person, then comes the indictment, the handcuffs, and the arrest.
I don’t know what the future holds for these guys, but all of this could potentially be coming their way.
The ‘Chaos’ Narrative
Since those terminations, it has been an all-out assault on Pete Hegseth in the press and you need to keep that in mind when you read these hit pieces.
He did nothing to these people. He was running the Pentagon; then somebody leaked top-secret information to NBC News; then they opened up an investigation at the Pentagon to figure out who did it; then these guys got fired; and now suddenly the field is flooded with hit pieces on Hegseth.
The White House has made clear they think it is these guys behind the leaks. “This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News. “And unfortunately, there have been people at that building who don’t like the change the secretary is trying to bring, so they are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media.”
The drip, drip, drip of the ‘chaos’ narrative also includes a New York Times report that Pete allegedly had a second Signal chat about those Houthi attack plans. This one was not with all the administration officials but with people who are close to him – meaning his brother who works with him at the Pentagon, his attorney who also works with him at the Pentagon, and his wife who doesn’t work with him at the Pentagon and would be a controversial person to share the plans with.
Trump was asked about all of this – the second Signal chat and the narrative around Pete – at the White House Easter egg roll Monday when talking to reporters and made it very clear he stands by his secretary of defense:
REPORTER: Do you remain confident in Pete Hegseth?
TRUMP: Oh, totally. Why do you even ask a question like that? We have recruitments at an all time high. The spirit in the Armed Forces is fantastic… Are you bringing up Signal again? I thought they gave that up two weeks ago.
REPORTER: There was a new report this weekend that he used a separate chat that included some family members.
TRUMP: It’s all just the same old stuff from the media. That’s an old one. Try finding something new.
That is good because Pete is not in neocon. He is not a war hawk. He is not a chaos agent. He is a war fighter who has helped already the Army, Navy, and Air Force get on track with record recruiting years, who is eliminating ‘woke’ from our Armed Forces, who is restoring lethality to our military by making sure standards are uniformly high, and much, much more.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,054 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.