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Saturday, March 29, 2025
WSJ: Hegseth took wife to meetings with top foreign military officials
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US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brought his wife to two meetings with foreign military counterparts “where sensitive information was discussed,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
Former Fox News producer Jennifer Hegseth is not employed by the US Defense Department, officials tell the outlet.
According to the report, she attended meetings with UK Secretary of Defense John Healey and at NATO headquarters in Brussels for discussions on Ukraine.
The meeting with Healey was held the day after the US said it had scrapped intelligence sharing with Kyiv. The Journal says the meeting covered “the US rationale behind that decision, as well as future military collaboration between the two allies.”
The report says the NATO meeting was with the US-led forum of 50 nations called the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. Officials say that confidential information is routinely discussed at the forum, including donations to Ukraine that they do not want to be publicly known.
The outlet says some officials present at the meetings were unaware who Jennifer Hegseth was, while others were surprised at her presence but allowed the meetings to be held without objections.
The report comes amid concerns over Hegseth’s handling of sensitive and classified materials and information after it was revealed he texted the start time for a planned killing of a Houthi rebel in Yemen on March 15, as well as other details of imminent waves of US airstrikes, according to a screenshot of a text chat released by The Atlantic.
Hegseth has repeatedly denied texting war plans as US President Donald Trump’s administration tries to contain the fallout from the revelation that it included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal with Trump’s most senior national security advisers to coordinate on the start of an offensive in Yemen.
The Journal reported Thursday that the strikes were based on Israeli intelligence drawn from a human source in Yemen.
Reuters contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.