“U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff is leaving his job,” a senior defence official stated on Thursday (April 24, 2025), within the newest shakeup to hit the higher echelons of the Pentagon’s management.
“Joe Kasper will continue to serve President Trump as a Special Government Employee (SGE) handling special projects at the Department of Defence,” the official stated, including: “Secretary Hegseth is thankful for his continued leadership and work to advance the America First agenda.”
His departure is the most recent in a sequence of high-profile exits from high Pentagon posts, together with three officers who had been eliminated final week amid an investigation into leaks after they reportedly clashed with Kasper.
Former senior advisors Darin Selnick, Dan Caldwell and Colin Carroll hit again on Sunday (April 20, 2025), saying Pentagon officers had “slandered our character with baseless attacks.”
“We still 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 stated in a joint assertion posted on social media.
Mr. Hegseth’s former Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot additionally took purpose at him in a scathing opinion piece on Sunday that described “a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.”
“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer,” wrote Mr. Ullyot.
The shakeups come as Mr. Hegseth faces a brand new scandal over his reported use of messaging app Signal to debate the U.S. strikes on Yemen with his spouse and different individuals not often concerned in such discussions.
The White House has stood by him to this point, simply weeks after it emerged that Mr. Hegseth additionally shared particulars in regards to the strikes towards Yemen’s Houthi rebels in one other Signal chat to which a journalist had been inadvertently added.
Published – April 25, 2025 12:55 pm IST
