Adviser to Hegseth Says Watchdog Report Over ‘Signalgate’ Clears Him
President Donald J. Trump is standing firmly behind Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as Democrats and their media allies attempt to manufacture another scandal over national security messaging. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, the president dismissed the left’s latest narrative — the claim that Hegseth had ordered U.S. forces to leave no survivors during a strike on a Venezuelan vessel suspected of trafficking narcotics.
“He said he did not say that, and I believe him 100%,” Trump stated, brushing off partisan demands for Hegseth’s resignation and signaling total confidence in his wartime leadership.
According to a senior adviser, the forthcoming Pentagon inspector general report on the so-called “Signalgate” controversy does not accuse Hegseth of mishandling or transmitting classified information. Instead, the Biden-era Pentagon — particularly former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — is expected to shoulder blame for improper cellphone practices that long predated Trump’s return to office.
Navy Reserve Commander Tim Parlatore, attorney and adviser to Hegseth, told Just the News, No Noise that the inspector general’s review, authored by Steven Stebbins, “totally exonerates” the War Secretary. Congress has already received the report, which is anticipated to be made public Thursday.
“You’re going to see that it totally exonerates Pete Hegseth,” Parlatore said. “There is no classified material in those texts. Everything he declassified — that he has within his authority to declassify.”
He continued: “Classified information — did he violate that, did he put out classified information? And the answer is no. Totally exonerated.”
Parlatore noted one minor section in the report containing an unsupported opinion about potential risk to troops. “But the problem is it is completely untethered from the rest of the report. It doesn’t cite to a single source, not to a single document, not to a single interview, because it is not something that the IG was investigating.”
The controversy reignited after Jeffrey Goldberg, the left-leaning editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, published a March article entitled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.” Goldberg claimed he had been mistakenly added to a Signal group chat by someone identified as “Mike Waltz,” then serving as national security adviser.
According to the story — and corroborating details reported by Just the News — the group included War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and other top-level national security officials. Messages attributed to Hegseth reportedly referenced strike plans ahead of the March 15 attacks on Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen.
Those strikes, carried out under Operation Rough Rider, hit more than 800 targets across several weeks, according to U.S. Central Command.
Despite anonymous leaks to corporate media claiming Hegseth violated regulations, Parlatore insisted the inspector general explicitly rejects the allegation. Instead, the report points to the widespread and casual use of the Signal messaging platform across the entire national security bureaucracy during the Biden administration.
“That’s actually another big part of this report — is it talks about how the use of Signal, it’s not a Pete Hegseth issue, it’s not a Trump administration issue, it’s a whole-of-government issue,” Parlatore said. “The use of Signal has proliferated ever since 2020.”
One of the most striking findings, Parlatore said, concerns former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“This report actually notes that the former secretary, Lloyd Austin, actually used to bring his personal cell phone into the office, into the SCIF, in violation of the law. And that was something that was passed down to Secretary Hegseth when he took over, and he said, ‘well, I’m not going to do that,’ and he wanted to do it a different way because he wanted to comply with the law.”
According to Parlatore, Hegseth moved quickly upon learning of Austin’s conduct.
“I don’t want to do what Lloyd Austin did. I don’t want to break the law. Give me something that’s legal and secure,” Parlatore recalled him saying, emphasizing that Hegseth asked his Pentagon team to develop an entirely lawful and secure communications process going forward.
As Democrats amplify what increasingly appears to be a collapsing narrative, the inspector general’s report — and President Trump’s public backing — place Hegseth in a stronger position than ever.