Karoline Leavitt: ‘The Entire Pentagon Is Working Against’ Pete Hegseth

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed a damaging opinion piece published in Politico Sunday about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying “they are lying about the Secretary of Defense” and suggesting that Hegseth has become a target inside the department. “This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” she said.

John Ullyot, a former chief Pentagon spokesman who resigned last week, wrote in Politico that “it’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” and predicting that “it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.” Ullyot, who was a communications adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the Pentagon was “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and “a full-blown meltdown.”

Ullyot, who argued for Hegseth’s appointment to the role and was appointed to his role at the Pentagon by Hegseth, said his support for the boss changed after a “month from hell” that began with the “Signalgate” story, when Hegseth and others–including a reporter–were part of an unclassified Signal chat group discussing detailed operational plans for a military strike on Yemen.

Ullyot accused Hegseth of following “horrible crisis communications advice” in the wake of the story by insisting that “nobody was texting war plans,” which dragged out the story and led the reporter added to the chat, Jeffrey Goldberg, to release the full chat log two days later, blowing the story into a massive scandal.

ForbesTrump ‘Stands Strongly Behind’ Hegseth Amid Latest Signal Chat ControversyBy Siladitya Ray

Signalgate was followed, Ullyot writes, by reports Hegseth brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to meetings with foreign military counterparts, and then set up a top-secret briefing on China for Elon Musk–a meeting cancelled after it became public. On Sunday night, The New York Times reported Hegseth had discussed the Yemen strikes in yet another Signal chat that included members of his family.

In an interview Monday on Fox News Channel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “the president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon” and argued that people in the Pentagon “are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media.”

“Let me reiterate, no classified information was shared in these chats,” Leavitt said on Fox & Friends. “But you do have leakers who are leaking classified information — which is a crime, I will add. And so the administration and the president have taken a very strong stance against anyone who leaks, especially sensitive and classified information that can put our troops and our war fighters at risk.”