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Something stinks inside the Pentagon, and the White House knows it.
A leak investigation involving Pete Hegseth, top Trump defense aides, and a supposedly “top secret” document about reclaiming the Panama Canal has totally unraveled. The case began with firings, rumors of a traitor in the ranks, and even whispers of an illegal NSA wiretap on a Trump loyalist’s phone. That alone would be enough to trigger a massive scandal, right? But now, even that story appears to have been fake.
The real story is looking more and more like this entire “leak” probe was a political hit job, used to purge Trump loyalists from the Pentagon using shaky, sketchy evidence, personal rivalries, and shady, shadowy maneuvers. And the deeper you go, the worse this thing gets.
It all started when Pete Hegseth fired three top aides, supposedly because of a leak. The justification for this was a bizarre claim that the NSA had wiretapped one of them, Dan Caldwell, without a warrant. That kind of surveillance would be not only unconstitutional but also a nuclear-level scandal. The White House was rightfully alarmed. But when they looked into it, they discovered the claim wasn’t true. Even worse, they were being fed that lie by Hegseth’s own lawyer, Tim Parlatore.
The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.
The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks. But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.
The episode, as recounted by four people familiar with the matter, marked the most extraordinary twist in the investigation examining the leak of an allegedly top secret document that outlined options for the US military to reclaim the Panama canal to a reporter.
When the NSA wiretap story fell apart, any trust that was left broke down completely between the White House and the Pentagon. Hegseth’s team claimed Caldwell had leaked a classified Panama Canal document, but Caldwell denied it all. White House insiders started asking if this whole thing had been orchestrated to purge aides who had clashed with Hegseth’s first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.
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Trump’s advisers also admitted they didn’t know what to believe and suspected something far more political and sinister was at play. The Guardian piece goes on.
The advisers were stunned again when Parlatore denied having told anyone about an illegal NSA wiretap himself and maintained that any information he had was passed on to him by others at the Pentagon.
The leak was first attributed internally to Hegseth’s senior adviser, Dan Caldwell, who was escorted out of the Pentagon and fired last month alongside two other aides, Hegseth’s former deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick, and the deputy defense secretary’s chief of staff, Colin Carroll. But the illegal wiretap claim and Caldwell’s denials fueled a breakdown in trust between the Pentagon and the White House, where the Trump advisers tracking the investigation have privately suggested they no longer have any idea about who or what to believe.
In particular, one Trump adviser recently told Hegseth that he did not think Caldwell – or any of the fired aides – had leaked anything, and that he suspected the investigation had been used to get rid of aides involved in the infighting with his first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.
Key staff has been removed, so Hegseth is now navigating a Pentagon front office deliberately left in disarray and chaos. A junior aide has stepped up to fill the gap, but the White House refuses to make it official. It’s not chaos of Hegseth’s making. This is the Deep State playing games with national security and trying to sabotage from within. The Guardian piece continues.
The fraught situation is sure to increase pressure on Hegseth ahead of a Senate hearing next month, and more broadly for his office, which has been roiled by the leak investigation that has now continued for nearly a month with no new evidence or referral to the FBI.
The fallout has left Hegseth with no chief or deputy chief of staff, as he relies on six senior advisers to run his front office, which is involved in setting the direction of the defense department that has a budget of nearly $1tn and oversees more than two million troops.
And while Hegseth’s former junior military aide Ricky Buria has in effect assumed the job of the chief of staff, the White House has blocked Hegseth from giving him the job permanently on account of his limited experience and role in internal office drama.
The firings of the three aides were based on what officials claimed was “clear-cut evidence.” But after that claim, things got murky. Caldwell, who supposedly took a photo of a top-secret document and sent it to a reporter, went on Tucker Carlson’s show and said the whole thing was a setup.
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Then came word that the real leak may have come from mid-level military staff, not Hegseth’s aides at all. Meanwhile, Parlatore, the lawyer supposedly behind it all, claimed there might’ve been a wiretap on Caldwell’s phone but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) produce any real proof. Read more from The Guardian.
The skepticism among the Trump advisers is widely seen as a product of several developments that started shortly after the suspensions of Caldwell and Selnick on 15 April, followed by the suspension of Carroll on 16 April, according to seven people familiar with the matter.
After the aides were fired on 18 April and issued a joint statement denying wrongdoing, the White House received its first briefing on the firings. At that juncture, a handful of Trump advisers in the West Wing and elsewhere were told there was evidence that Caldwell had printed a document on US military plans for the Panama canal classified at the top secret level, took a photo, and sent it to a reporter using his personal phone. But the advisers grew uneasy in the ensuing weeks after Caldwell appeared on the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s podcast, denouncing their firings as the product of internal office politics at the Pentagon and alleging that the investigation had become weaponized against them.
They also then learned of a rumor at the Pentagon that the air force office of special investigations (OSI), which had been working the case for weeks beforehand, had possibly identified the leaked Panama canal document by virtue of the fact that it was a draft that lacked certain details that were in the final version of the document. As the rumor went, the document had led the air force OSI to focus its investigation on mid-level aides who worked in the US Southern or Central Command or for the joint chiefs of staff, and had not been told to focus on the activities of the three aides until the weekend after they had been fired.
It was not immediately clear whether the the rumor was correct or even from where it emerged. But it appears to have spurred the White House to press Parlatore to disclose the evidence against Caldwell, including how the Pentagon knew what was on his phone.
At first, Parlatore rebuffed the attempts to obtain the underlying evidence, noting it was inappropriate for the executive branch to insert itself into an ongoing criminal investigation that he said could still yield charges. But towards the end of April, according to what the Trump advisers shared inside the White House, Parlatore suggested that there had been a warrantless wiretap on Caldwell’s phone.
This isn’t just some botched leak investigation; it’s starting to look like a full-blown deep state op. Trump-aligned defense aides were fired without due process. And some seemingly fake NSA wiretap story was floated to justify it. And now, no one can say who actually leaked anything, if there was even a leak to begin with.
If this was just internal drama, it would be one thing. But we’re talking about a purge inside the Department of Defense, targeting Trump officials. That’s not “office politics.” That’s sabotage.
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President Trump should demand answers, fast. And anyone found to be manipulating investigations, lying about surveillance, or weaponizing national security to settle personal scores should be named and rooted out immediately. No mercy. No deals.
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