4 hours ago
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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ripped the “hoax press” and recently fired aides “spinning” lies for the turmoil now engulfing the Pentagon over the disclosure of sensitive US military information — vowing in a Fox News interview Tuesday morning that all persons found to be leaking will be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.
“When that evidence is gathered sufficiently — and this has all happened very quickly — it will be handed over to DOJ, and those people will be prosecuted if necessary,” Hegseth told host Brian Kilmeade on “Fox and Friends.”
“Once a leaker, always a leaker, often a leaker,” he added, noting that an extensive probe will uncover who divulged US plans for the Panama Canal or tech mogul Elon Musk’s planned visit to the Pentagon to review war preparations against China.
“We don’t think, based on what we understand, that it’s going to be a good day for a number of those individuals because of what was found in the investigation.”
Hegseth also confirmed that several ex-senior advisers including Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, Colin Carroll and John Ullyot — who penned a scathing op-ed in Politico about his “month from hell” serving inside the Defense Department — had been “let go” as a result of the initial probe’s findings.
“We identified there was sufficient evidence,” he said. “Again, there’s an investigation ongoing that will have to complete itself — sufficient evidence to believe that they or others near them were party to leaking.”
Asked specifically about Ullyot’s parting shot at his leadership, the defense secretary snarked: “Anybody that knows John knows why we let him go.”
English (US)