The Pentagon is diving deeper into the controversy surrounding a group chat between Trump administration officials discussing war plans in Yemen.
Department of Defense Inspector General Steven Stibbins shared in a memo that he plans to investigate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s contributions to the group chat, which unwittingly contained a member of the press. The announcement of the probe on Thursday came days after the Trump White House shared that the matter was “closed.”
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Stebbins wrote.
The probe was launched at the request of the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Those Senators, Roger Wicker, R-Miss, and Jack Reed, D-R.I., said reporting on Hegseth and others’ conduct “raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss classified and sensitive information.”
Questions over security have dogged the DoD since National Security Advisor Michael Waltz inadvertently added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the group chat that also contained Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.
The new investigation comes just days after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claim that the matter was settled.
“This case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned,” Leavitt said on Monday.
Stebbins has served as the acting Inspector General for the Department of Defense since January when Trump fired the previous IG amid a massive purge of the bureaucrats charged with agency oversight.
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