A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the second chat to The Associated Press.
The second chat on Signal — which is a commercially available app not authorized to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information — included 13 people, the person said. The person also confirmed the chat was dubbed “Defense ' Team Huddle.”
The New York Times reported that the group included Hegseth's wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser. Both have traveled with the defense secretary and attended high-level meetings.
The White House and Pentagon said late Sunday that disgruntled former employees were spreading false claims.
“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” said Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary. “Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell added in a post on X late Sunday that the report “relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda. There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story.”
The New York Times story comes just days after four officials in Hegseth’s inner circle departed last week as the Pentagon conducts a widespread investigation for information leaks.
Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, were escorted out of the Pentagon.
