Trump live updates: Hegseth makes appearance at Easter egg roll event and blasts critics over Signal chat

Donald Trump is standing behind Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, after reports that he shared details of a March attack on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

The revelations that Hegseth used the unclassified messaging system Signal for a second time to share highly sensitive security details come at a delicate moment for him, with senior officials ousted from the Pentagon last week as part of an internal leak investigation into his earlier use of the app.

“The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon,” Leavitt told Fox News on Monday. “And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.”

Hegseth shared details of the attack similar to those revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly included in a separate chat on the Signal app, Reuters reported on Sunday.