A prominent Republican on the House armed services committee, Don Bacon of Nebraska, has joined the call for the sack of the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.
The lawmaker told Politico that the chaos at the defense department is reigniting Republicans’ fears about his leadership abilities.
He said, “I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.”
Meanwhile the NBC has reported that some minutes before US fighter jets took off to begin strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen in March, army general Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads US Central Command, used a secure US government system to send detailed information about the operation to Hegseth.
The details sent to the Secretary of Defense included when US fighters would take off and when they would hit their targets, according to the report.
He provided Hegseth, as he is supposed to, with information he needed to know and did so using a system specifically designed to safely transmit sensitive and classified information.
According to the report also carried by the Guardian UK, the defense secretary then used his personal phone to send some of that same information to at least two group text chats on the Signal messaging app.
NBC’s report cited three US officials with direct knowledge of the exchanges.
Meanwhile, the government has denied the wrong doing by the defense secretary.