'signalgate 2.0' Is 'indefensible': Former Nato Chief

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis on Monday called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's reported sharing of military information in a group chat with family members “indefensible.”

“He's a former major in the U.S. Army. He was trained throughout his time as a junior officer to protect and guard the nation's secrets. He's got to know that he has failed to do that,” Stavridis told CNN’s Boris Sanchez on “CNN News Central.”

“And let’s face it, Boris, if Signalgate 1.0 was a release to a group of high-ranking officials, which it was, and got leaked inadvertently to a member of the media, so we saw exactly what was on it. Here we are at Signalgate 2.0, where evidently, if the reporting is correct, very similar level, but now it's going to unclassified individuals who lack the need to know any of this. So, it's gone from outrageous to truly egregious. And it's conduct that, frankly, is indefensible,” he added.

Last month, The Atlantic reported that top Trump administration officials had discussed sensitive military information in a Signal chat, with Hegseth sharing details of an upcoming attack on Houthi targets in Yemen. The magazine's Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included in that chat, which was largely made up of the leaders of defense and national security agencies.

This week, The New York Times reported that Hegseth had shared similar information in a second chat around the same time, this one including his wife, brother and personal attorney.

Hegseth has insisted he didn't share classified information in either chat. In an interview Tuesday morning on Fox News he argued the messages in the second chat were “informal” and “unclassified.”

“I look at war plans every single day. What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordination for media coordination and other things,” he said Tuesday on Fox News. “That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”

Sean Parnell, the Department of Defense’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement in the wake of The New York Times report on the second Signal chat that “the New York Times — and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage — are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article."

The Hill has reached out to the White House and Department of Defense for comment.