Former Pentagon advisers may face charges in leak probe: Hegseth

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Tuesday interview that his former top aides, who were fired last week amid a probe into leaks at the Pentagon, could face charges at the end of the investigation.

“We're going to investigate, and when we investigate, we'll take it anywhere it leads,” Hegseth said in an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” which Hegseth formerly co-hosted on the weekends.

“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,” the secretary added.

Hegseth said he is not optimistic that the probe would result in a favorable outcome for the terminated employees.

“We look for leakers because we take it very seriously and we will do the investigation. And if those people are exonerated? Fantastic,” Hegseth said in the interview.

“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," he continued.

The Pentagon on Friday fired senior aides Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick, all of whom initially were placed on paid administrative leave days earlier and escorted out of the building. Their terminations came after the DOD opened an investigation into the leaks of information to news outlets. 

All three of the political appointees said in a joint statement on Saturday that they had not been told what they were probed for and 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, adding, “All three of us served our country honorably in uniform – for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, based on our collective service, we understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it.”

Kilmeade asked in the interview about the former aides’ claims that they were not questioned about the leaks and did not have their phones searched, as would be standard procedure in an investigation. They also said they were not asked to take a polygraph test.

“So why would they be let go and not be investigated?” Kilmeade asked.

“Well, Brian, when there were a series of serious leaks at the Pentagon, which there were… we said enough is enough. We're going to launch a leak investigation, which we did, which was then handed over to OSI, which is the special investigators here at DOD,” Hegseth said.

“Through that investigation, information was surfaced, which created a responsibility to take action. That's how it works… when you actually investigate leaks, Brian,” he continued. “So, it's easy to say, ‘Oh, we asked everybody and everybody said they're good.’ Or you can take it seriously and say, ‘We don't think leaks are okay at this department.’”

Hegseth has been under new scrutiny after The New York Times reported Sunday that he shared attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal thread with his wife, brother and personal lawyer. He created the chat and shared the information from his personal phone, the outlet reported. 

Hegseth said on Tuesday morning that the messages on Signal were “informal” and “unclassified.”