On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, already under scrutiny for mishandling military attack intelligence, brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with senior foreign military officials where sensitive information was discussed.
In one of these two meetings, held last March 6, Hegseth spoke with his British counterpart, John Healey, after the U.S. cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
Earlier, Hegseth had taken his wife Jennifer to a meeting with his NATO colleagues, in Brussels. During the meeting in question, held last February, those present had been discussing issues related to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
As the WSJ emphasized, these events are generally restricted to those with security clearance. Jennifer Hegseth is not an employee of the Department of Defense and at this time, it is not known whether she had obtained clearance to attend the two meetings in question.
Some of the officials attending stated that they did not know the woman, others, however, said they were quite surprised to see her taking part in these events.
“When you have meetings with ministers or high-level NATO officials, those meetings almost always include sensitive security conversations”, Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel explained. “If you are going to discuss top secret, national security issues, you have to be very selective.”
The affair in question has been brought into the spotlight at a time that is already problematic for Hegseth. Members of Congress from both parties have expressed concern about the Secretary of Defense’s handling of sensitive military information in what has come to be called the Signal chat scandal which revolves around allegations that he shared sensitive military information, disclosing details about planned U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, including timing and weapon specifics, in a Signal group chat–a commercial platform whose messages are not encrypted. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine, had been inadvertently added to this chat.
Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Jack Reed, the group’s top Democrat, sent a letter Wednesday asking the Defense Department’s inspector general to launch an investigation into the Signal chat. This latest revelation will add more fuel to the controversy already swirling around Hegseth.
