President Donald Trump listens as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
The Trump administration has finished probing into how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a messaging app for military discussions — and now a watchdog organization is pushing for those results to be released to the public.
Back in March, it emerged that Hegseth and several of President Trump’s cabinet members were using the encrypted Signal app, which automatically deletes messages, to talk about military actions in the Middle East.
This led American Oversight, a nonprofit focused on government transparency, to file the first lawsuit on the issue. This legal action resulted in a court order instructing officials to keep records and prompted a probe by the office of the inspector general (OIG).
Now, the watchdog has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking release of the OIG findings.
In a six-page FOIA request filed Wednesday with the Department of Defense OIG and accessed by Law&Crime, American Oversight is requesting the release of “any DOD OIG report(s) regarding DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth’s and other DOD personnel’s use of commercial messaging applications, including Signal, to conduct government business.”
The request offers the following justification for public disclosure:
People are keenly interested in reports about Secretary Hegseth’s use of apps like Signal for official business since there have been claims he once shared military operations details on these platforms. Such records could enhance the public’s understanding of government activities, including examining whether Secretary Hegseth used unclassified apps such as Signal to discuss classified information, and whether these interactions have been retained in line with legal requirements for record keeping.
The OIG investigation itself is no secret.
In April, Acting DOD Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins announced the evaluation. A two-page memo describes the inquiry “into recent public reporting on the Secretary of Defense’s use of an unclassified commercially available messaging application to discuss information pertaining to military actions in Yemen in March 2025.”
In a press release announcing the FOIA request, American Oversight accused Hegseth of taking “actions reportedly aimed at undermining whistleblowers at DOD.” Those allegations are based on an early October speech to military leaders, reported by the Reuters wire service, in which the secretary complained the OIG process has been “weaponized, putting complainers, poor performers, and ideologues in the driver’s seat.”
American Oversight says those concerns are also buoyed by a September DOD memo signed by Hegseth which directed the “Office of the Inspector General of the Department of War” to undertake a series of modifications related to status updates, complaint tracking, timelines for investigations and vetting whistleblower complaints with a “credibility assessment” based on the “credible-evidence standard.”
The group describes those developments as alarming — and appears intent on getting the OIG report released in quick fashion.
“Secretary Hegseth and other top officials put our national security at risk and jeopardized the lives of our brave men and women in uniform when they used Signal to discuss sensitive military operations,” Executive Director of American Oversight Chioma Chukwu said in a statement. “The American people have a right to know what the inspector general uncovered about this reckless misconduct — including whether and how these officials broke the law. The IG’s independent report is a critical part of exposing the truth.”
