The Defense Department Inspector General’s Office has launched an “evaluation” of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app following news reports that Hegseth shared operational details of imminent strikes in Yemen with a group chat that included a reporter.
An evaluation is defined differently from an investigation, which may look into alleged violations of criminal or civil law and other matters, said Mollie Halpern, a DoD IG spokesperson.
“Evaluations recommend improvements and identify where corrective action is necessary,” Halpern told Task & Purpose on Thursday.
The assessment, which comes at the request of the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will look into whether Hegseth and other defense officials followed Defense Department procedures for using a commercial messaging app to conduct official business, Acting Defense Department Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins wrote in a memo on Thursday.
“Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” Stebbins wrote in the memo to Hegseth.
When asked about the evaluation, Marine Col. Christian Devine, a Pentagon spokesman, told Task & Purpose on Thursday, “We don’t comment on ongoing investigations or evaluations by the DODIG.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported earlier this month that he had been inadvertently invited to a Signal chat group that included top officials from President Donald Trump’s administration. Goldberg also wrote that Hegseth shared information with the group on March 15 about pending U.S. military air and missile strikes against Yemen that included information about when planes would take off, when Tomahawk missiles would be launched, and the time when the first bombs were expected to drop.
Hegseth and other Trump administration officials have said that no classified information was shared in the chat. Speaking to reporters last week, Hegseth also said that he was merely updating Trump’s national security team in real time.
But national security attorney Mark Zaid told Task & Purpose last week that he has “no doubt” that the information about the Yemen strikes was classified at the time Hegseth sent it.
“It’s dumbfounding to even contemplate an argument that this would not be classified,” Zaid said at the time. “It’s reminiscent of the end of the ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ where the wizard is saying, ‘Don’t look over at the man behind the curtain,’ when you’re staring right at him.”
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