Pete Hegseth's 'horrible' Signalgate response is a lesson in how not to do crisis comms, ex-spokesman says

Pentagon communications have been in meltdown mode, according to ex-spokesperson John Ullyot, who called the Signalgate response "horrible."

Ullyot, who resigned from his post last week in part to avoid working under chief press secretary Sean Parnell, described in an op-ed for Politico on Sunday a chaotic month full of fumbles, infighting, and a reluctance to handle bad news by owning up to it.

"The building is in disarray under Hegseth's leadership," the former communications official said, calling the Pentagon's Signalgate debacle the start of the "Month from Hell."

He wrote that when that story broke, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth "followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that 'nobody was texting war plans.'"

Ullyot called this "a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away."

Hegseth's "nebulous disavowal" that the Signal chat contained sensitive information spurred the reporter inadvertently added to the chat, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, to release the full chat thread, Ullyot said, "turning an already-big story into a multi-week embarrassment for the president's national security team."

The trouble has snowballed as the Pentagon placed three top officials on leave and saw two other officials, including Ullyot, depart the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

And now the department is grappling with Signalgate 2.0, new allegations that the defense secretary shared details of combat plans in another Signal chat with people without "a need to know."

The Times reported that Jennifer Rauchet, Pete Hegseth's wife, was among the people in a Signal chat that contained details of F/A-18 strikes. ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Ullyot challenged the Pentagon's official claims that the three officials on leave — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the Deputy Secretary of Defense — were put on leave because of investigations into alleged leaks.

Ullyot wrote that "Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month."

"Yet none of this is true," he continued.

"While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing," he said.

Trump officials were quick to attack Ullyot's claims on Sunday.

"This guy is not America First," wrote Donald Trump Jr. in a social media post on X Sunday. "I've been hearing for years that he works his ass off to subvert my father's agenda. That ends today. He's officially exiled from our movement."

In his op-ed, Ullyot also called attention to Sunday's revelation by the New York Times that on March 15, Hegseth also shared sensitive military information related to the pending attacks by US aircraft on Houthi targets in Yemen in a separate Signal chat with his wife, brother, and personal attorney.

Hegseth denied such claims, saying that The Times' reporting was part of a "slash and burn" strategy used by disgruntled former employees.

"What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax, won't give back their Pulitzers, they got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies."

Ullyot highlighted this trend in his commentary criticizing the situation at the Pentagon, saying that "unfortunately, Hegseth's team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door."

On top of Ullyot's departure and the three officials placed on leave, a fourth official, Joe Kasper, Hegseth's chief of staff, is departing his role. Kasper is said to have initiated the investigation into recent leaks from the Defense Department, including information related to US military operations centered on the Panama Canal and intelligence-sharing efforts with Ukraine.

Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell said the Times' reporting— and the "grievances of disgruntled former employees" — is "another old story—back from the dead," from "the Trump-hating media," which "continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump's agenda."

"We've already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down," he said.

Pentagon leadership has repeatedly said that lethality and the individual warfighter are top priorities, but Ullyot argued that with Signalgate and other comms disasters over a "terrible month," the "Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama."