Secret Musk Pentagon briefing nixed by Trump led to ouster of longtime Hegseth associates
Two longtime associates of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, appointed to senior roles at the Department of Defense at the outset of President Donald Trump’s second term, were escorted from the Pentagon on Wednesday amid an escalating investigation into leaked intelligence that reportedly included classified information.
Deputy Chief of Staff Darin Selnick and Dan Caldwell, a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, both previously worked at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), where Hegseth served as CEO from 2012 to 2016.
“The leaks under investigation include military operational plans for the Panama canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon and pausing the collection of intelligence to Ukraine,” Politico reported.
But Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that the leaked intel investigation was launched “on March 21 after a March 20 New York Times story detailed plans to allow Elon Musk to attend a briefing in the ‘Tank’ with members of the Joint Chiefs to hear about future China war plans.”
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According to Axios, news of the planned secret Musk-China briefing angered President Trump.
“Musk or Hegseth didn’t just decide to call off that briefing after the leak. President Trump himself ordered staffers to kill it,” the news outlet reported.
“What the f— is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go,” Trump said, Axios reported, citing a top official.
Caldwell was “being investigated for ‘unauthorized disclosure’ of classified information,” according to Griffin’s reporting.
Selnick, who was installed at the Pentagon on January 20, was recently promoted after serving as the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. He worked at CVA from 2013 to 2017, and again from 2019 to 2024, according to his LinkedIn page and his Pentagon biography. He also served in the first Trump administration and the George W. Bush administration.
Caldwell had served at CVA, first as policy director starting in 2013, and later as executive director, according to the Associated Press.
Caldwell “was the staff member designated as Hegseth’s point person in the Signal messaging chat that top Trump administration national security officials, including Hegseth, used to convey plans for a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen,” the AP added. “The chat, set up by national security adviser Michael Waltz, included a number of top Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.”
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ABC News’ Martha Raddatz described (video below) Caldwell as “so close to Hegseth [that] the Secretary made him the point of contact with the White House for strikes on the Houthis in Yemen during that Signal chat last month.”
Critics weighed in.
Former Republican and former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of the MeidasTouch Network, alleged that Caldwell is “going to be fired because he outed the fact that Musk arranged with Hegseth to get a top secret briefing at the Pentagon. Trump and his Chief of Staff didn’t even know about it.”
Veteran and veterans’ activist Paul Rieckhoff observed, “This CVA network, where they were/are in place, and what’s happened to them today should be a much bigger story.”
He pointed to a previous post where he had written: “Maybe overdue accountability is finally starting after SignalGate. Dan Caldwell is well-known in Washington as the former head of Hegseth’s former partisan political group, Concerned Veterans of America.”
“They are not just radical,” he added. “They are sloppy and incompetent. That puts our national security at risk. And has our enemies celebrating.”