White House says it stands behind Hegseth after attack plans shared in second Signal chat

PHOTO CAPTION: Pete Hegseth at a press conference in Washington DC on 4 February. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -     President Donald Trump stands behind U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday, after reports that he shared details of a March attack on Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.

The revelations that Hegseth used the unclassified messaging system Signal for the second time to share highly sensitive security details come at a delicate moment for him, with senior officials ousted from the Pentagon last week as part of an internal leak investigation into his earlier use of the app.

"The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon," Leavitt told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. "And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement."

In the second chat, Hegseth shared details of the attack similar to those revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat on the Signal app by mistake, Reuters reported on Sunday.

The second chat included about a dozen people and was created during Hegseth's confirmation process to discuss administrative issues rather than detailed military planning. Among them was Hegseth's brother, who is a Department of Homeland Security liaison to the Pentagon.

Leavitt said Hegseth shared no classified information on either Signal chat.

 (Reporting By Doina Chiacu and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Toby Chopra and Alistair Bell)