United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put defence personnel and their missions at risk when he used the messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive information about military strikes on Yemen’s Houthis, a classified Pentagon watchdog report has found.

In a report provided to Congress on Tuesday, the Pentagon inspector general said its investigation concluded that Hegseth violated protocol when he used his personal phone for official communications, and recommended that all Pentagon officials be better trained, according to US media reports quoting sources familiar with the findings.

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US officials are not authorised to use Signal for classified information as it is not part of the Pentagon’s secure communications network.

However, as Hegseth has the authority to declassify information, the Pentagon report found that the consequences of this were unclear.

The report, which has not yet been made public, could ramp up pressure on Hegseth, who has come under intense bipartisan scrutiny from lawmakers since March when the messages were first revealed by a journalist who appeared to have been accidentally added to a Signal chat group being used by Hegseth to discuss strikes.

Some lawmakers called for Hegseth’s firing at the time, but US President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of the scandal even as public outrage grew.

Hegseth has described the findings of the investigation as a “total exoneration”, even though they do not appear to categorically clear him from wrongdoing.

Lawmakers are also investigating a separate case in which Hegseth is alleged to have verbally ordered a second strike on a boat which had been destroyed in the Caribbean. The second strike is alleged to have killed two survivors of an earlier strike amid President Donald Trump’s deadly crackdown on drug smugglers.

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A partially redacted version of the investigation is expected to be published on Thursday. Here’s what we know about it so far:

What has the Pentagon’s inspector general found?

Pentagon acting inspector general Steve Stebbins’ classified report to Congress stated that Hegseth had risked compromising sensitive military information, which could have endangered US troops when he shared details of an air strike in Yemen via the Signal messaging app in March this year, CNN first reported on Wednesday. Participants in the Signal chat group included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard.

Hegseth used Signal to share highly sensitive information with unauthorised persons, the report found, and failed to preserve those communications as required by US law.

It also found that he shared information about a Yemen operation in a separate Signal group chat which included his wife, brother and personal lawyer – all unauthorised people, CNN revealed.

However, the inspector general’s findings also stated that, as Hegseth has the authority to declassify sensitive information, the consequences of his actions are less clear.

Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox News host who had no prior government experience before his appointment, has maintained that he declassified the information before sharing it on the Signal chat and thus did nothing wrong, although he has not presented documentation to back that claim.

Stebbins began his investigation on April 3, following an outcry from both Democrat and Republican lawmakers who pointed out that the Signal chat could have put US personnel in danger if it had fallen into the wrong hands. The inspector general, who was appointed by Trump in January, revealed in a memo at the time that he had been prompted by the leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee to begin a probe.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD [Department of Defense] personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Stebbins wrote in a short memo published on April 3, adding that compliance with classification and records retention would also be reviewed.

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Did Hegseth declassify the information before he divulged it on Signal?

Stebbins’s report detailed how Hegseth’s staff set up Signal so that the defence secretary could use it from his office at the Pentagon, where personal devices are not allowed and where he could not have physically accessed his phone.

While the inspector general’s report states that Hegseth has the authority to determine the classification level of military intelligence – and could have declassified the information if he wanted to – it does not conclusively determine whether the material he transmitted over Signal had been declassified.

According to a report by CNN, the information shared by Hegseth on the Signal chat was taken from a classified US Central Command document marked “Secret/NOFORN”, meaning no foreign nationals were permitted to view it.

Stebbins’s report referenced a broader review of how federal officials use Signal and recommended more training for Pentagon officials to ensure compliance.

Hegseth refused to be interviewed by the inspector general and instead submitted his arguments in writing, The Associated Press reported. Investigators relied on screenshots shared by the journalist who broke the story in March because Hegseth failed to provide all of his Signal messages.

How has Hegseth responded to the report?

In a post on X on Tuesday, Hegseth claimed the inspector general report revealed “no classified information” was shared and that it represented “total exoneration” for him.

That post followed one by his office’s spokesperson Sean Parnell, who wrote: “This Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along – no classified information was shared.”

“This matter is resolved and the case is closed,” he continued.

Parnell also responded to A New York Times post which raised the potential dangers of Hegseth’s actions as highlighted in the report, saying: “There is zero evidence that supports this conclusion. None.”

He added that the “flawless execution & success of Operation Rough Rider” – the name of the Yemen bombing campaign discussed on Signal – was evidence that no troops had been placed at risk.

Parnell and Hegseth’s stances align with those of the Trump administration since the scandal first broke in March. President Trump’s office did not publicly admonish Hegseth, and Trump himself called the scandal a “witch-hunt”. Trump also attempted to blame the messaging app by questioning whether Signal itself was “defective”.

Some Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees, however, said that Hegseth’s actions would be a fireable offence for any other official.

“This was not an isolated lapse. It reflects a broader pattern of recklessness and poor judgment from a secretary who has repeatedly shown he is in over his head,” Senator Mark Warner said in a statement on Wednesday.

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What was said in the Signal chat?

The “Signalgate” scandal, as it has been referred to in US media, dates back to March.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a veteran journalist and editor-in-chief of the Washington, DC-based The Atlantic magazine, revealed in an article on March 24 that Trump administration officials accidentally added him to a Signal chat in which they disclosed specific details about a March 15 air strike on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, hours before the attack happened.

Goldberg said he had earlier received a connection request on March 11 from someone named Michael Waltz on the encrypted messaging service, likely to be then-US national security adviser Mike Waltz. Thinking it was probably a scam, Goldberg nevertheless accepted the invitation to join the group, which had been named “Houthi PC small group”, only to find that top officials were also on it, including Hegseth, Vance, Rubio, and Gabbard. There were 18 participants in the group.

The chat revealed precise timings of when US F-18 planes and drones would be launched. One update on the timing of the strikes read: “This is DEFINITELY when the first bombs will drop.”

The strikes killed at least 53 people, including children.

Goldberg said he left the group after discovering that the messages matched the timing of the air strikes.

His article about the affair soon after drew immediate uproar from both Democrats and Republicans, with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer calling it one of the “most stunning breaches of military intelligence” in recent US history. Democrats and a small group of Republicans demanded an investigation, and the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee at the time, the late Gerald Connolly, asked Stebbins to launch a probe.

Critics pointed out that foreign intelligence operatives could have intercepted the Signal messages and that Signal’s auto-delete function violated government transparency requirements that require documentation to be kept, albeit securely.

In a follow-up article on March 26, The Atlantic revealed more screenshots of the chat.

But Hegseth denied that he had shared “war plans” on the messaging app and said he was permitted to declassify information and that he only communicated details he believed would not endanger the mission. He told Fox News in April that the messages were “informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things”.

What other scandals has Hegseth been involved in?

Hegseth is separately being investigated over a verbal order he is alleged to have given regarding a September 2 strike on a boat presumed to be carrying drugs in Caribbean waters.

Sources involved said Hegseth gave the order to “kill everybody” in the mission, according to details first published on November 28 by The Washington Post, quoting two people who had direct knowledge of the operation.

A commander in charge of the operation then ordered a second strike, which killed two people struggling in the water who had survived a first attack on the 11 people in the boat.

The boat was the first to be hit in Trump’s deadly campaign against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which Democrat lawmakers have criticised for its human rights implications. The Trump administration has justified the strikes as a necessary step to curb drug inflows to the country, which it says threatens national security.

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At least 80 people have been killed in the strikes on Venezuelan boats that the US says – without evidence – are trafficking drugs. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called the strikes “unacceptable” in October and said they represented “extrajudicial killing”,  which is in violation of international human rights law.

The family of a Colombian man, Alejandro Carranza, killed in a strike on September 15, also filed a legal case on Tuesday, arguing that he was a fisherman and that the hit was an extrajudicial killing. That case has been filed at the regional Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is based in Washington, DC. However, the US does not recognise its jurisdiction.

In a post on his Truth Social media platform, Trump stated at the time that the September 2 strike had killed 11 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, designated by the US as a terrorist group, and claimed that the boat was headed to the US.

However, Rubio, on the same day, said in a news briefing, it was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean” before changing his stance the following day and saying it was “headed towards, eventually” the US.

US media reported that four missiles had been used and that Hegseth watched the strikes in real time. The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon knew there were survivors in the water, quoting people familiar with the operation who said the argument was that the boat needed to be sunk.

How have Republicans responded to these allegations?

Hegseth condemned The Washington Post’s reporting last week, saying it was “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory”. At a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday at the White House, he said the second strike happened in the “fog of war” and that he did not see any survivors. He added that he “didn’t stick around” for the rest of the mission.

Both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee have opened investigations into the legality of the attack. “This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” Democrat Senator Tim Kaine told reporters last week.

Responding to reporters’ questions on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump appeared to distance himself from the affair. “I wouldn’t have wanted that – not a second strike,” he said, adding that his administration would look into the reports. He also stated that Hegseth had told him he “did not order the death of those two men”.

Questions regarding what role Hegseth in fact played in the attack will be asked during a classified congressional briefing on Thursday with the commander the Trump administration says headed the operation, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

Before Hegseth’s appointment in January, the military veteran and former Fox News host faced allegations of sexual assault, excessive alcohol use and financial mismanagement.

In 2017, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman who said he took her cellphone and blocked the door of a hotel room to prevent her from leaving, according to a police report. Hegseth denied the accusation, although his lawyer acknowledged that the woman was paid a settlement.

A December 2024 report by The New Yorker revealed claims that Hegseth, as leader of the advocacy group Concerned Veterans for America between 2013 and 2016, frequently became so intoxicated at work events that he relied on colleagues to get home. He was also accused of using official funds for the nonprofit as a “personal expense account”. Hegseth has denied these claims.