The White House denied a report by National Public Radio (NPR) that the US presidential administration is looking for a replacement for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after media reports that Hegseth shared US plans to strike Houthi rebels in Yemen in a chat group with his wife and brother on the instant messaging app Signal.
White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt wrote on social media site X: “The NPR report is a complete fabrication. The article cites an anonymous source who clearly has no idea what he is talking about. As the president said this morning, he strongly supports the secretary of defense.”
The New York Times, CNN and Reuters quoted sources as saying that Pete Hegseth shared the US plan to fight the Houthi armed forces in a 12-person group on the instant messaging software Signal, including his wife, brother, lawyer and two senior advisers.
In March this year, in the same chat group on Signal, White House National Security Advisor Waltz mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, to the group and shared the US government’s plan to discuss combating the Houthi armed forces. Both the Pentagon and the White House denied that there was any information leak.
