Adviser to Hegseth Says Watchdog Report Over ‘Signalgate’ Clears Him

“You’re going to see that it totally exonerates Pete Hegseth,” Parlatore said. “There is no classified material in those texts. Everything he declassified — that he has within his authority to declassify.”

“Classified information — did he violate that, did he put out classified information? And the answer is no. Totally exonerated,” he added.

“There is a tiny little section in there that is really untethered from the rest of the report where the investigator states their opinion that having this information out there on an unclassified could have endangered the troops,” Parlatore also said. “But the problem is it is completely untethered from the rest of the report. It doesn’t cite to a single source, not to a single document, not to a single interview, because it is not something that the IG was investigating.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and a frequent critic of President Trump, published a story in March titled, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”