Hegseth aide upended Pentagon leak inquiry with false wiretap claims
Source: The Guardian
Mon 9 Jun 2025 14.41 EDT
First published on Mon 9 Jun 2025 13.01 EDT
Days before Pete Hegseth fired three top aides last month over a Pentagon leak investigation into the disclosure of classified materials, according to four people familiar with the episode, a recently hired senior adviser said he could help with the inquiry.
The adviser, Justin Fulcher, suggested to Hegseth’s then chief of staff, Joe Kasper, and Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, that he knew of warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had identified the leakers. Fulcher offered to share the supposed evidence as long as he could help run the investigation, three of the people said. But when he eventually sat down with officials, it became clear he had no evidence of a wiretap, and the Pentagon had been duped.
The problem was that development was not communicated to the White House – so several Trump advisers who were told of the NSA wiretap claim believed that was part of the “smoking gun” evidence against the three aides fired by Hegseth, until they developed their own doubts. The Guardian revealed last month that there were unsubstantiated NSA warrantless wiretap claims underpinning the leak investigation, but its origin story and the involvement of Fulcher in the controversy has not been previously reported.
Fulcher has said this account is not correct. In a statement, he said he never suggested there were NSA wiretaps or that he had access to wiretap records. “I never approached Parlatore, Kasper or anyone else offering ‘surveillance evidence’ and did not ask to join an investigation on that or any other basis,” he said. The extraordinary episode adds to the growing portrait of dysfunction inside Hegseth’s front office, which is involved in setting the direction of a department that has a budget of nearly $1tn and oversees more than 2 million troops around the world.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/hegseth-wiretap-inquiry-justin-fulcher
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