WASHINGTON ― Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) stated Monday that it’s “fair to wonder” if Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth has been ingesting alcohol once more given his “reckless” use of Sign, a third-party messaging app, to share extremely delicate navy plans with nationwide safety officers and individually with members of his household.
“When Secretary Hegseth keeps making reckless mistakes with our national security – like leaking war plans in Signal chats or the chaos we’re seeing at the Pentagon – it’s fair to wonder if he actually stopped drinking like he promised during his confirmation,” Gomez informed HuffPost in an announcement. “People have legitimate concerns about whether his judgment is compromised.”
A Protection Division spokesperson declined remark.
“We don’t comment on remarks from elected officials,” stated the spokesperson.
Earlier than being confirmed, Hegseth confronted quite a few allegations of extreme ingesting, typically at work. He vowed as a nominee that he wouldn’t drink if he was confirmed.
“I’m not going to have a drink at all,” Hegseth stated in December, forward of his affirmation listening to. “It’s not hard for me, because it’s not a problem for me.”
However Gomez, who’s a member of the Home Everlasting Choose Committee on Intelligence, has been elevating issues that Hegseth could also be ingesting amid his Sign use. He requested the query final month throughout a heated change with high intelligence officers, in response to the bombshell report that Hegseth had used Sign to share conflict plans with nationwide safety officers ― and one other attendee unintentionally let a journalist into the group chat.
On Monday, the California Democrat raised the prospect once more in mild of The New York Instances reporting Sunday that Hegseth shared almost equivalent conflict plans in one other personal Sign group chat final month with members of his household, together with his spouse, his brother, his private lawyer, and a few dozen others from his interior circle.
Gomez and different Democrats on the Home intelligence panel final month known as on Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to provoke an unbiased investigation into the Sign chat debacle, particularly elevating issues that the beautiful safety breach might have compromised intelligence with U.S. allies.
“This chat was reckless and put the lives of our service members at risk,” Gomez and 10 different committee members wrote to Gabbard. “The information discussed would properly be classified under both Department of Defense and Office of the Director of National Intelligence guidelines. Claims to the contrary defy both the plain language of those classification guides and common sense.”
Gabbard, who was amongst these included within the preliminary Sign group chat with different administration officers, has given no indication she’ll provoke such a probe.
