Trump unlikely to dismiss Hegseth, but officials are troubled by disarray in Pentagon chief’s inner circle

By Kaitlan Collins, Natasha Bertrand, Jake Tapper and Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — A defiant Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth booked himself on the television network where he used to work as a host Tuesday morning in a bid to address the fallout over revelations that he discussed military plans in a second Signal group chat, this time with his wife and brother.

But after Hegseth faced multiple direct questions in the Fox News interview about his inner circle being in disarray, the appearance was seen by some officials as only calling more attention to the story rather than tamping down the coverage, according to two people familiar with how the interview was perceived within the administration.

Yet President Donald Trump is unlikely to dismiss Hegseth and has spoken to him twice since The New York Times and CNN reported on the second Signal group on Sunday night. In their first call, Trump said he had Hegseth’s back and voiced frustration at “leakers” he said were trying to damage his administration, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Trump has since been soliciting feedback from people around him about Hegseth’s performance during conversations, according to two people familiar with the comments. So far, most, if not all, has been positive about the Pentagon chief. Trump is extremely hesitant to fire any Cabinet official at this point in his term, much less Hegseth, given how hard his team fought to get him confirmed in the first place.

Yet the state of affairs in his inner circle has troubled some senior officials who want to see changes made to how the secretary’s team in the front office of the Pentagon operates. The chaos prevailing at the Pentagon has not been lost on the White House, where officials have watched with concern as Hegseth struggles to contain the dysfunction and as his inner circle implodes.

Hegseth’s most trusted advisers are now his wife, his lawyer and his junior military aide, who may soon be appointed his new chief of staff, multiple people familiar with the matter said.

Others close to Hegseth, including his adviser, retired Army Sgt. Maj. Eric Geressy — who served with Hegseth in Iraq and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross last month — have gotten so frustrated by the turmoil that they have indicated to colleagues that they may resign, two of the sources said. CNN has reached out to Geressy.

Some of Hegseth’s closest former advisers have issued warnings this week about turmoil inside the Pentagon. They include his former spokesman John Ullyot and three former senior officials Hegseth fired last week: top adviser Dan Caldwell; deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick; and Colin Carroll, who was chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense.

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot said in a statement obtained by CNN.

One congressional Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, escalated his public calls Tuesday for Hegseth to be held accountable.

Asked Tuesday by CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” what he would do if he were president and his defense secretary had acted as Hegseth did, Bacon said, “I would hold them accountable, and I’d fire them.” Putting sensitive information on an application like Signal, Bacon said, was “very foolish,” but Hegseth’s response — describing the chat earlier Tuesday on Fox as “informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination and other things” — exacerbated the offense.

“He could recover from that with candor. But when you deny it’s a problem, I think it even makes it worse,” Bacon said.

Carroll’s firing has also strained Hegseth’s relationship with Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, who brought Carroll on as his chief of staff and was not consulted before he was placed on leave, the sources said.

“He is in full paranoia, back-against-the-wall mode,” said one of the sources familiar with Hegseth’s state of mind over the last month.

Hegseth’s now-former chief of staff, Joe Kasper, had repeatedly clashed in recent months with the three men Hegseth dismissed last week, the sources told CNN.

Several West Wing staffers had grown frustrated about what they described to others as Kasper’s lack of responsiveness, often complaining about the difficulty in getting Hegseth’s chief of staff on the phone or to respond to their requests. At one point toward the beginning of Hegseth’s tenure, the White House was trying to reach Kasper to get Hegseth to sign a memo kickstarting the process of developing Trump’s Golden Dome missile shield, but the memo went unsigned for three weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In another example of the disorderly nature of the front office, at one point in March, Hegseth directly asked the director of DoD’s special access programs – which are among the most highly classified programs within the DoD – to read Elon Musk into more than two dozen programs having to do with China, according to multiple people familiar with the episode. But Hegseth did not first run the idea through a policy process that included lawyers, the people said, and ultimately, DoD ethics lawyers in the Standards of Conduct office said it would not be appropriate. The idea died. The people familiar with the matter said it might have succeeded if a more standard policy process had been followed.

Caldwell and Selnick, who have known Hegseth for years and worked with him at the conservative veterans organization Concerned Veterans for America, came to believe Kasper was isolating Hegseth and turning him against them, the sources said. Kasper, in turn, has told people he doesn’t know where those accusations are coming from — it was Hegseth who launched the leak investigation that led to their firings, according to Kasper.

Kasper said he had “nothing to do” with any of the decisions made when it came to the leak investigation. “I’m not even read in, nor was I involved in decisions,” he said.

Kasper is no longer Hegseth’s chief of staff, and is in the process of moving into a new position as a special government employee, according to the person familiar.

“Joe’s a great guy. He’s a great American,” Hegseth said Tuesday during the interview on Fox News, adding, “He’s staying with us, going to be in a slightly different role, but he’s not going anywhere, certainly not fired.”

Most senior officials inside the White House believe Hegseth has been the victim of what he termed “disgruntled former employees” who were fired in the past week for what Hegseth said were unauthorized leaks to the media.

The former employees in question had been handpicked by Hegseth to serve on his leadership team, but he suggested in the Fox interview that his loyalty to them had run out.

“It’s not my job to protect them. It’s my job to protect national security, the president of the United States, and let the investigation go where it is,” he said.

“Disgruntled former employees are peddling things to try to save their a**,” Hegseth told Fox.

Caldwell this week denied leaking information, and said he hadn’t been questioned or polygraphed as part of any investigation.

“I have been a friend and supporter of Pete Hegseth for a long time, and I’m just personally devastated by this. It’s just awful,” he told Tucker Carlson on his podcast. “The entire Department of Defense cannot continue to be consumed by chaos.”

In his own interview on Fox, Hegseth listed a number of recent stories he suggested came about due to leaks from his staff, including plans for a US takeover of the Panama Canal and a scheduled briefing for Musk on war plans against China.

Hegseth suggested he wanted to keep those issues out of the media. But one of them — the report about plans to brief Musk — came as a surprise to Trump himself, who ordered the briefing for Musk be canceled. It’s not clear whether the president would have learned of the planned briefing had it not appeared in the news.

While Trump’s aides think the Signal matter has been sufficiently resolved, some have said they still believe there could be more to emerge about Hegseth’s leadership of the Defense Department that would prove embarrassing or worse.

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