Signal leak dominates confirmation hearing for top Pentagon nominees
As President Donald Trump’s administration continues to manage the fallout from the Signal incident, four nominees for top Pentagon positions faced questions about their own history of handling sensitive and classified information during their confirmation hearing on Thursday.
The leak of a Signal group chat where members of the Trump administration discussed operational details for upcoming strikes against the Houthis in Yemen has sent shock waves throughout Washington, overshadowing what was shaping up to be a routine confirmation hearing.
While Trump administration officials maintained that no classified information was shared over the commercial messaging app, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) requested an inspector general investigation into the facts and circumstances of the incident.
“I also join those of my colleagues who are calling for an investigation sooner, the better. I think we need to counter the tendency of this administration to want to sweep everything under the rug whenever things get uncomfortable for them,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said during the hearing.
Michael Duffey, Trump’s pick for undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said he was not aware of any Signal group chats that contained sensitive information.
Duffey, however, is currently serving as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, so Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) asked if he would commit to participating in the inspector general’s investigation given that he was Hegseth’s right hand as the incident was unfolding.
“I would participate. I would follow department procedure,” Duffey said.
Reed along with other Senate Democrats have also asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to conduct “a thorough and impartial investigation” of the government officials in the group chat.
But Bondi indicated on Thursday that a criminal investigation into the incident is highly unlikely.
Troy Meink, Trump’s pick to be the next Air Force secretary; Emil Michael, who was tapped for the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering position; and Keith Bass, nominee for assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, all said they have never discussed classified information on an unclassified device.
“I’m glad that all of you have said no, because that’s pretty obvious. If you admitted that you did not follow the law, then you will be admitting to committing a federal crime,” Hirono said.
Senate and House lawmakers have pointed to various federal laws that might have been violated during the incident, including the Espionage Act, which deals with the mishandling of classified information, and the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act that require government officials to preserve official communications for transparency and archival purposes.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, (R-Mo.), said that questioning about the Signal incident was “faux outrage that is being demonstrated by my Democrat colleagues about a signal chat that didn’t have war plans.”
“It occurs to me that this is more to do about the election loss and rooting against President Trump and trying to get a scalp than it is about national security. So keep going with it, because this is the failed stuff that didn’t work for you before,” said Schmitt.
The Atlantic revealed a full text exchange from the “Houthi PC small group” Signal chat on Wednesday, which showed that Hegseth shared the details about the timing of the attacks, weapons and aircraft carrying out the strikes two hours prior to the strikes.
“I have planned and conducted strikes off of aircraft carriers, multiple strikes over Iraq and Kuwait, and I would agree with the senator from Missouri, this is not an entire war plan. What this is, is an operational plan for very risky combat operations off of an aircraft carrier,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who is a veteran, said during the hearing.
“And it’s not all the information, but the most critical information that we have in our government are things like launch time off of a platform, in this case of an aircraft carrier, type of airplane, F-18s, MQ-9s, weapons like Tomahawks, time on target. It is very critical information. When you have pilots that are about to go feet dry over a foreign nation within an hour or two hours, and that information is being shared on a non-secure system, it puts those pilots at great risk. I agree it is not all the information, but some of the most critical information that you would not want to be released is what was in that signal chain.”
The hearing was otherwise calm, suggesting that the nominees are likely to sail through the confirmation process.
Meink’s nomination came under scrutiny after Senate Democrats requested information about the role Musk played in his nomination to lead the Air Force and whether he arranged the lucrative contract in a way that positioned SpaceX as the best company to fulfill it during his tenure at the National Reconnaissance Office. But there was no mention of this issue during the hearing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also raised concerns about the problems that occurred during Bass’ tenure at the White House Medical Unit and the Central Intelligence Agency prior to the confirmation hearing. Last year, the DoD inspector general found that the medical unit provided health care and dispensed prescription medications, including controlled substances, to ineligible White House staff during Bass’ tenure at the White House.
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