The Pentagon’s inspector general has reportedly determined that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth improperly used the messaging app Signal to communicate classified information, thereby endangering U.S. military operations.
Media reports published Wednesday provided a preview of the inspector general’s report, which is expected to be released in full on Thursday.
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Anonymous sources familiar with the document told news outlets including The Associated Press that Hegseth’s use of a personal device to transmit classified information was considered a violation of Pentagon policy.
The inspector general’s report focuses on the scandal that was uncovered in late March by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote an article describing an unusual series of events.
Goldberg explained how he received an invitation to join a Signal chat on March 11, apparently from then-National Security Adviser Mike Walz.
Goldberg accepted the invitation, even though he wasn’t sure if the message was a hoax. Two days later, he said he found himself in the middle of a conversation with what appeared to be senior officials from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Those in attendance included Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump defends signal chat
In a Signal chat, Hegseth reportedly divulged advance details about the March 15 attack on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. These details included the exact timing of when F-18 aircraft would take off, when drones would arrive, and when both sides would conduct airstrikes.
Reports about Mr. Goldberg’s chats sparked outrage against the Trump administration, particularly Mr. Walz and Mr. Hegseth.
Critics decried the risks the messages posed to U.S. military operations overseas, with some worrying that the lives of service members could be at risk if Signal chats fell into the wrong hands.
This week’s inspector general report recommends increased training to ensure compliance with operational security standards.
But the paper refuses to consider whether what Hegseth sent through Signal was actually classified at the time.
Instead, the inspector general noted that as secretary of defense, Hegseth had the right to determine the level of secrecy of military information and could have declassified the information if he had chosen to do so.
Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Mr. Hegseth’s office, said the discovery was a victory for the embattled defense secretary, who has long denied that “war plans” were shared through messaging apps.
“The Inspector General’s inspection completely exonerates Director Hegseth and confirms what we knew all along: no classified information was shared,” Parnell said in a statement.
“This matter has been resolved and the case is closed.”
Parnell also challenged the media to highlight the risks the information poses to U.S. military personnel.
“There is absolutely no evidence to support this conclusion. There is none,” Parnell wrote in response to a New York Times post that raised the potential danger.
On the contrary, Parnell argued that the “flawless execution and success of Operation Rough Rider,” the name of the Yemeni bombing campaign, was evidence that no troops were ever put at risk.
President Trump himself has previously called the aftermath of the scandal a “witch hunt” and questioned whether the Signal itself was “defective.”
Administration officials have repeatedly demanded that the scandal, known as Signalgate, be “solved.” Meanwhile, Hegseth has not received any public reprimand from the administration for his participation in the chat.
“Protocol violation”
But critics like Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer have called the conversation one of the “most astonishing military intelligence leaks” in recent years.
Some have suggested that foreign intelligence agents may have intercepted Signal’s messages. Others argued that Signal’s auto-deletion feature violates government transparency requirements that require document storage, albeit securely.
Democrats and some Republicans called for an investigation into Hegseth’s actions. The late Gerald Connolly, then the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, echoed this call in a March 26 letter.
“I urge you to immediately open an investigation into this gross violation of protocol and national trust,” he wrote.
“The use of signals to convey this information endangered the lives of our military men and women and shamefully promoted the careless behavior of our nation’s senior leaders to our adversaries.”
On April 3, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Stephen Stebbins, responded to the protest. He launched an investigation and explained that he was encouraged to do so by the leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“The purpose of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other Department of Defense employees have complied with Department of Defense policies and procedures when using commercial messaging applications in official business,” Stebbins wrote in a short one-page memo.
“Additionally, we verify compliance with classification and record-keeping requirements.”
Stebbins assumed the post of acting inspector general in January after President Trump led a purge of government watchdog agencies.
On January 24, just days into his second term, President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general, bipartisan officials tasked with overseeing various executive agencies.
That included Stebbins’ predecessor, Robert Storch, who served as the Pentagon’s inspector general from 2022 to 2025.
