Pete Hegseth Busted for Lying about Report that He Endangered US Troops and Boat Strikes Shock Lawmakers

Pete Hegseth is facing increasing scrutiny over his alleged war crimes, aka boat strikes, and a new Inspector General report about his signal chat that found his actions created a risk to U.S. troops.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing increasing scrutiny over his alleged war crimes, aka boat strikes, and a new Inspector General report about his signal chat that found his actions created a risk to U.S. troops.

Signal Chat Report Did Not Exonerate Hegseth

“The Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” — IG report on Pete Hegseth’s signal chat

Pete Hegseth and his “Department of War” propagandists are getting dragged as they claim exoneration via a report on Hegseth’s signal chat posing a threat to U.S. troops.

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“US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked endangering troops by using the Signal messaging app to discuss a strike on Houthis in Yemen, sources say a Pentagon watchdog report finds,” a reporter with the AP and Reuters reported for DW.

Naturally, Hegseth claimed the report was a “Total exoneration” and “No classified information. Case closed. Houthis bombed into submission.”

But Hegseth misrepresented the report’s findings.

Thursday morning, military affairs journalist for the Washington Post Dan Lamothe corrected Department of “War” Assistant Press Sec Jacob Bliss, who also claimed that the report “exonerated” Hegseth, writing on Wednesday, “Dan is a liar. The review is a total exoneration. He just doesn’t like the facts.”

Bliss wrote that over Lamothe’s original tweet summarizing the report with great accuracy it seems : “Secretary Hegseth’s actions could have endangered U.S. objectives or pilots, the inspector general found in this report. Hegseth does have the power to declassify. The inspector general did not explicitly address whether Hegseth did so appropriately in this case.”

So, Thursday morning, Lamothe replied with the facts that Bliss clearly doesn’t like:

From the report itself: “The Secretary sent information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes. Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes. Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”

So yes, Hegseth’s actions created a risk to operational security and U.S. troops. Those events did not occur, and Hegseth has the authority to declassify, but the IG report did not mention whether he had done so appropriately. So, not an exoneration at all.

Hegseth’s actions put U.S. troops in danger. To make this even worse, we learned in March that the NSA warned of vulnerabilities in Signal app a month before the Houthi strike chat.

Read more below.