Pentagon investigators are probing the circumstances surrounding text messages sent by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. These messages reportedly detailed military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen. The investigation aims to determine whether Hegseth personally authored the texts or if they were composed by other staff members.

The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General has been conducting interviews with Hegseth’s current and former staff for several weeks. They are trying to understand how sensitive information from a classified system ended up in the commercial messaging app Signal.

Mollie Halperin, a spokesperson for the DOD IG, stated, "Because this is one of the DOD IG’s ongoing projects, in accordance with our policy we do not provide the scope or details to protect the integrity of the process and avoid compromising the evaluation."

The messages were shared in two separate chat groups. One group included high-ranking officials, including Vice President JD Vance, while the other group contained Hegseth's wife, Jennifer Hegseth, who is not a government employee. The timeline of the message sharing coincides with a period in mid-March when key members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including Hegseth, inadvertently disclosed details about a missile strike in Yemen to the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

Hegseth is scheduled to testify for the first time as defense secretary on Tuesday. Democratic lawmakers are expected to scrutinize his management of classified and sensitive information during this testimony.

In addition to investigating the classification of the information and its authorship, the inquiry is also examining whether any staff members were instructed by Hegseth or others to delete messages. This aspect of the investigation is significant, as federal law mandates the retention of official communications as records.