The Department of Defense‘s inspector general released a damning report on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s use of app-based group chats to discuss sensitive information on Thursday, finding that Hegseth’s failure to follow protocol could have put US troops in harm’s way.
The scandal around accidentally including an editor at the Atlantic in sensitive discussions of upcoming strikes in Yemen was an early black mark against Hegseth and the Trump administration generally. While the controversy was unfolding, however, Vice President JD Vance returned to the discussion to crack jokes.
Following The Atlantic breaking the news of the Hegseth DOD’s troubling security lapse, Vance returned to the chat to joke about the furor surrounding Signalgate.
“This chat’s kind of dead. Anything going on?” Vance wrote.
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The inspector general’s report made it clear that Hegseth’s lax security could have had disastrous consequences. Still, Pentagon officials celebrated the report’s release as a win.
“The Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along — no classified information was shared. This matter is resolved, and the case is closed,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell shared in a statement.
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