Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted Wednesday that he did not share classified plans through a Signal group chat of Trump administration officials, telling reporters that The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently added to the chat, released details that were not war plans.
"As a matter of fact, they even changed the title to 'attack plans,' " Hegseth told reporters. "There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information."
He further insisted that he sees war plans "every single day," but he is not the person who devises them.
"You know who does attack plans and war plans?" he said, pointing at officers behind him. "Men like that admiral right there …or Erik Kurilla, our general in CENTCOM. They do attack plans and war plans, and thank God we have those men. [They] do it and do it well and our enemies know it."
Hegseth added that it is his job to provide updates in "real time" to keep fellow Cabinet members and others informed.
"That's what I did," he said. "That's my job. The warfighters will take the fight to the enemy, and I love what they do. Under President Trump's leadership, our enemies are on notice. We will have peace through strength, and we'll keep putting our troops first."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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