Signal affair: More pressure on Hegseth for new chat decades

U.S. defense minister Pete Hegseth is becoming increasingly under pressure in his chat affair after new revelations. For the first time, a member of the Republicans of President Donald Trump also called for consequences for Hegseth. The broadcaster NPR reported that the search for a successor had already started. The white house rejected this a little later.

Hegseth, according to media reports, is said to have shared military plans for attacks on the Huthi militia in Yemen in a group chat via the Signal app with his wife and other people. Hegseth’s brother and his personal lawyer are said to have been chat members – both, according to the media reports, have jobs in the Pentagon, but his wife does not.

Hegseth was already criticized for another signal group chat on the subject with senior government officials. There he shared detailed information on the planned course of the attacks. Since the editor -in -chief of the magazine “The Atlantic” had accidentally added to the chat, the entertainment came to the public. The government denied that the detailed information had been secret.

Republican congress member Don Bacon, a former airwaffen general and a member of the defense committee, told the magazine “Politico”, Hegseth acts amateurish. If the reports about the second signal chat were right, this was “completely unacceptable”. He did not want to tell the White House how to deal with it, but: “If I had that, I wouldn’t tolerate it.”

NPR reported, citing a non -named government official, that the White House had initiated the procedure for looking for a successor for Hegseth. Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described this as “fake news” – and pointed out that the President Hegseth had publicly strengthened his back hours earlier.

Hegseth said the information about the second signal boss at an Easter for families in the Garden of the White House, the allegations were based on information from angry former employees who tried to “settle down people and ruin their reputation. That doesn’t work for me.” Hegseth had come as a moderator for the TV station Fox News in Trump’s field of vision.

Chat from the private phone

According to the “New York Times”, Hegseth is said to have created the second chat himself. In January, around a dozen members from his personal and professional environment are said to have been part of the Signal Group – that is said to have been a defense minister before Hegseth’s swearing -in. He is said to have used the chat from his private phone.

Legal professor Ryan Goodman, who was once active as a lawyer in the Ministry of Defense, said in the broadcaster CNN that the second chat could potentially be a bigger problem for Hegseth because he “communicated attack plans to people who should never have received”.