Rep. Don Bacon on Monday became the first Republican lawmaker to suggest that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be removed from the position, though the White House continued to stand by him.
Mr. Bacon of Nebraska, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico on Monday that he previously had reservations about Mr. Hegseth being chosen for the role because he “didn’t have a lot of experience.”
“I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern,” he said.
But Mr. Hegseth and President Trump both said Monday he wasn’t going anywhere.
They blamed biased media and leaks from disgruntled former employees for the latest reports, first made by the New York Times, that his wife and brother were all included in a second Signal group chat that discussed the March airstrikes in Yemen.
It was the second time Mr. Hegseth was accused of sharing information through Signal. The first time last month notoriously included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddle the Russia hoax, won’t give back their Pulitzers, they got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies,” Mr. Hegseth said at the White House Easter egg roll.
“This is what the media does,” he said. “They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”
Mr. Trump also dismissed questions about Mr. Hegseth on Monday.
“He’s doing a great job. It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing so you don’t always have friends when you do that.”
Despite his doubts, Mr. Bacon said he wouldn’t tell the White House how to handle the situation but he finds “it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.”
“Russia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all these phone calls at the very top, and the No. 1 target besides the president … would be the secretary of defense,” Mr. Bacon said. “Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right. He’s acting like he’s above the law — and that shows an amateur person.”
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said Sunday that “recently-fired ‘leakers’” were to blame for the false claim.
“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” she said. “Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”
The reports came the day after three former key Defense Department advisers said they have had their character “slandered” amid an ongoing internal Pentagon investigation into leaks of sensitive information.
The three men — Dan Caldwell, an aide to Mr. Hegseth; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Mr. Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff — released a blistering joint statement on X on Saturday about the situation.
The three men were reportedly removed from their posts and escorted out of the Pentagon last week.
“We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door,” they wrote in their joint statement.
Democrats have called on Mr. Hegseth to be removed from his position since even the first Signal group chat fiasco, which was set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz and included other Cabinet officials.
In an X post Sunday, Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York said of the second report that “the details keep coming out.”
“We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” he wrote. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”
