Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska and retired Air Force brigadier general, rejected the claim made by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell that the DoD Inspector General report on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal app, released this week, “totally exonerated” Hegseth. “No, that is total baloney,” Bacon said during a CNN interview. “I have better words for it, but you can’t say it on TV. I read the report and what I saw, what had happened was wrong, but the report makes clear that the secretary put sensitive information that would ordinarily be classified.”
The report found Hegseth jeopardized troop safety and violated department policy by using Signal for a classified discussion that accidently included a reporter from The Atlantic. Bacon said Hegseth’s “unclassified phone is a top target.”
