Hegseth’s team in turmoil: Leak scandal or ideological clash?

On April 17, following a leak investigation into unauthorized disclosures of sensitive military information, three of Pete Hegseth’s top Pentagon officials — Senior Adviser Dan Caldwell, Deputy Chief of Staff Darin Selnick, and Chief of Staff to the Deputy Defense Secretary Colin Carroll – were fired and escorted out of the Pentagon.

“The official line that we got is that they were leaking to the press, and Pete Hegseth even went on Fox News to back that up,” says Jill Savage.

However, Blaze News senior editor of politics and Washington correspondent Christopher Bedford says, “Something is rotten in Denmark.”

Caldwell, Selnick, and Carroll “worked with Pete Hegseth at Concerned Veterans for America; they have been loyal to him; they helped push him across the finish line to become the secretary, and now you've got all of them kicked out,” says Bedford.

However, “Their personal communication devices weren't confiscated; they weren't placed under arrest; they were given access to these secret files until the moment that they were escorted out the door, and Hegseth went on to say, ‘Well, some of them may be exonerated.”’

“There's something weird here,” says Bedford.

He went through several possibilities — “a turf war with Hegseth's chief of staff” or a deep-state plot — but came to the conclusion that those scenarios are unlikely.

But then another thought came to him: “Maybe this is ideological,” and “it's from the secretary.”

Given Caldwell’s skepticism of war with Iran and Hegseth’s "hawkish" stance, perhaps there was a behind-the-scenes clash we don’t know about yet.

What isn’t vague, however, is that “this is starting to make the Pentagon look very shaky,” Bedford says. “Pete Hegseth better start coming up with some answers.”

To hear more of Bedford’s analysis, watch the episode above.

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