A drumbeat of suspensions of top Pentagon officials continued into a second day on Wednesday with a defense official confirming that Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary, was suspended.
Carroll is the third top political appointee to be suspended from his job in connection with a leak probe — apparently into a news story about a proposed top secret China briefing to Elon Musk — that also ensnared Dan Caldwell, a top adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff.
The move has surprised and puzzled officials in the Pentagon since Caldwell and Selnick were trusted advisers who were close to Hegseth.
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Earlier Wednesday, Axios reported that both Caldwell and Selnick were being investigated as part of a probe into who told The New York Times about plans for the Pentagon to provide a top-secret briefing on China to Musk, the world’s richest man who has been empowered by President Donald Trump to dramatically slash and reshape the federal government.
The original news story of the planned China briefing, which was published more than a month ago, said that the Pentagon had scheduled a briefing for the billionaire on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China. It cited two officials as the sources for that news and two others who confirmed broader details.
Reporters asked Hegseth about the firings on Wednesday during the open portion of his meeting with El Salvador’s defense minister, but they went unanswered.
Prior to coming to the Pentagon in January, Carroll worked at the defense contractor Anduril Industries, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also worked at the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center as its chief operating officer under the Biden administration but, according to Politico, he was fired for creating a hostile work environment.
Meanwhile, both Caldwell and Selnick were close allies of Hegseth. Both men worked at the same nonprofit — Concerned Veterans for America — and Caldwell even worked there when Hegseth was running the organization.
At the Pentagon, both men were given major roles in the three months since Trump returned to office.
By late March, Caldwell was designated as Hegseth’s point person for top national security officials and the vice president, according to the defense secretary’s unsecured conversation in a Signal app group chat with other top administration officials — which mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic — about plans for military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
One defense official, who was granted anonymity by Military.com to speak candidly, even described Caldwell as being like a family member to Hegseth.
Meanwhile, Selnick was one of the first Trump officials to come to the Pentagon, and he took over running its personnel and readiness directorate, which fielded the slew of directives and orders to address the plans to oust transgender troops, offer back pay to COVID-19 vaccine refusers and address standards among the force.
Selnick was recently promoted from that position to be Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff.
Military.com reached out to both Caldwell and Selnick but did not receive any replies.
The fallout from the alleged leak investigation is not the first shake-up of staff in the top offices of the Pentagon.
Last month, Hegseth’s office also sidelined another senior political appointee, John Ullyot, who had acted as the top Pentagon spokesman before Sean Parnell took over the role.
Ullyot’s reassignment came after he issued an especially blistering statement defending the removal of an online article honoring trailblazing Black baseball player and Army veteran Jackie Robinson.
Ullyot issued two statements on the matter in which he argued that Hegseth’s staff did not view or highlight Robinson — along with other female service members and troops with minority backgrounds who were censored from Defense Department media — “through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex.”
Robinson is a historic figure in baseball because he was the first Black player to play in the major leagues in the 1940s, during a time of segregation and systemic racism in the U.S.
In a video posted days after Ullyot’s ousting, Parnell largely reiterated Ullyot’s message but admitted that “some important content was inadvertently pulled offline” and blamed artificial intelligence tools “and other software.”
He also alleged that content was being both “mistakenly removed” and “maliciously removed.” But the Defense Department also censored much more media on female, minority and LGBTQ+ troops that has not been restored, and has undertaken a wider campaign to ban books from military libraries, including the U.S. Naval Academy.
— Patricia Kime contributed to this report.