WASHINGTON — An aide to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth published an op-ed Sunday in which he was highly critical of his former boss and suggested that President Donald Trump might soon remove him after weeks of turmoil, including leaked texts about airstrikes in Yemen and the abrupt firings of top officials.
“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” John Ullyot, who had been a top spokesman at the Defense Department before he left his job there last week, wrote on Politico. “From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.
“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer.”
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ullyot, who worked in the first Trump administration, as well, also noted the firings of several top Pentagon officials in the last several days. On Friday, according to Ullyot, Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was removed from his position following the firings of several other senior aides to Hegseth, including deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and senior adviser Dan Caldwell, as well as the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, Colin Carroll. (Selnick, Caldwell and Carroll said in a statement Saturday: “We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”)
“In the aftermath [of the firings], Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month,” Ullyot wrote. “Yet none of this is true.”
Ullyot said that he was not part of the purge and that he opted to leave the Pentagon when he turned down a position Hegseth had offered him.
He described himself in the piece as loyal to Hegseth, but he also noted a series of unforced errors by his former boss.
“[E]ven strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: 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 op-ed was published within hours of The New York Times’ reporting that Hegseth used his personal phone to send information about military operations in Yemen to a Signal group chat that included his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer. Two sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed the reporting to NBC News.
