Washington:
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses’ Chief of Staff has left his job, the Secretary of Defense said Thursday in his latest shakeup to hit the Pentagon leadership’s upper management.
“Joe Casper will continue to serve President Trump as a Special Government Employee (SGE) at the Department of Defense as a special project,” the official said, adding that “Chief Hegses is grateful for his continued leadership and for his work to advance the First American Agenda.”
His departure is the latest in a series of famous exits from the Pentagon Top Post, including three staff members who were removed last week amid investigations of leaks after a collision with Casper.
Former senior advisers Darrin Selnick, Dan Caldwell and Colin Carroll fought back on Sunday, saying Pentagon officials “defllied our character with an unfounded attack.”
“If there is still an aggressive investigation, or even an actual investigation of a ‘leak’, we have not yet been told whether it has been investigated accurately,” they said in a joint statement posted on social media.
Former Hegses Pentagon spokesman John Urito also targeted him in a scathing opinion piece Sunday describing “a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.”
“President Donald Trump has a strong record to explain his top officials. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegses staying in his role for so long,” Uriot wrote.
A shake-up occurs as Hegseth faces a new scandal to discuss his strike with his wife and others who are not normally involved in such a discussion, in the face of a new scandal in which Hegseth reportedly used messaging app signals.
The White House has been standing by his side up until now, but it’s only weeks after it was revealed that Hegses also shared details about Yemeni Huthi’s strike against the rebels in another signal chat where the journalists were carelessly added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published by Syndicate Feed.)
