The Pentagon is in “total chaos” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is unlikely to remain in his role, according to its former top spokesperson, who painted a scene of dysfunction, backstabbing and continuous missteps at the highest levels of the department.
“The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” John Ullyot wrote Sunday in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece. “The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”
Ullyot, who resigned from the Pentagon last week, described a department in collapse. He accused Hegseth’s team of “falsehoods” about why three top officials were fired last week, saying they hadn’t leaked sensitive information to the media. He chastised Pentagon officials for how they handled revelations that Hegseth shared sensitive military information in a Signal chat, and he pointed to other leaks that caused embarrassment to the administration.
The remarkable accusations by a former official — who left only two days ago and insists he still supports the Trump administration’s national security policies — underscores the infighting and upheaval that has turned increasingly public in recent weeks.
But he also found himself in the center of several controversies that added to that chaos.
Ullyot was sidelined after he defended the removal in March of a story discussing the service of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, part of a larger purge of diversity-related military webpages.
“The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration,” he wrote.
The Defense Department and White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The Pentagon on Friday fired top staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff will also leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official.
POLITICO was the first to report the firings and Kasper’s move, which one defense official ascribed to personality clashes between the chief of staff and the other men.
“Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge” that has left him without senior advisers, Ullyot wrote. “More firings may be coming, according to rumors in the building.”
The three fired staff backed up some of Ullyot’s claims in a Saturday post on X, saying they didn’t know why they were terminated. The trio wrote that they “have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”
They charged that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” They expressed support for the “Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again,” but did not mention Hegseth, with whom they’d worked closely.
The terminations follow a purge of top military officers in February, including former Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, and Air Force second in command, Gen. James Slife.
Even before he departed last week, Ullyot’s own role at the Pentagon was unclear. He wrote in an earlier statement that he was leaving because he and Hegseth “could not come to an agreement on another good fit for me at DOD.”
Ullyot led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs during Trump’s first term. He took the lead in the administration’s first weeks in removing the Pentagon workspaces for several media outlets — including POLITICO, The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN — in favor of giving the spaces to other media outlets, many of them conservative.
His comments will likely make more trouble for Hegseth, who remains under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general for his use of Signal to disclose sensitive information about airstrikes in Yemen. The New York Times reported Sunday that Hegseth allegedly set up a Signal chat with his wife, a former Fox News producer, and his lawyer, in which he disclosed potentially classified information on upcoming airstrikes against the Houtis.
“It’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer,” he wrote.
The post Former Pentagon official warns department’s dysfunction could topple Hegseth appeared first on Politico.
