(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Advisers were reportedly told that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used wiretaps to fire top aides amid the Pentagon’s investigation into leaks.
The chaos began in the middle of April when it was announced that three Defense Department aides had been fired shortly after they were put on leave. The aides were senior adviser Dan Caldwell, Hegseth deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense. At the time, the Pentagon was investigating the source of a number of leaks — including supposed military plans for retaking the Panama Canal and aircraft carrier movement in the Middle East.
The aides denied any wrongdoing in the wake of their firings. Just days after he was let go, Caldwell told Tucker Carlson he was framed.
A Tuesday morning report from The Guardian revealed that some believe the aids were wiretapped. According to the report:
The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.
The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.
But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.
Although the allegation wasn’t found to be true, it further reinforced a “breakdown in trust between the Pentagon and the White House.” At least one adviser to President Donald Trump, the report continued, told Hegseth he did not believed the fired aides were actually the ones responsible for the leaks:
In particular, one Trump adviser recently told Hegseth that he did not think Caldwell – or any of the fired aides – had leaked anything, and that he suspected the investigation had been used to get rid of aides involved in the infighting with his first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.
— —