The political and national security fallout continues to build following The Atlantic’s explosive report that revealed classified war plans were shared in a Signal group chat—one that mistakenly included a journalist. Among the first public calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to step down came from conservative New York Times columnist David French, who harshly criticized the blunder as a catastrophic breach of trust and competence.
“I don’t know how Pete Hegseth can look service members in the eye,” French wrote in a Monday op-ed. “If he had any honor at all, he would resign.” French, a former Army lawyer and longtime conservative commentator, did not hold back in his condemnation of Hegseth’s role in the incident.
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Citing The Atlantic‘s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s first-hand account of being inadvertently added to the encrypted chat, French called the story “one of the most extraordinary” he’s ever read. According to the report, Hegseth and several other senior Trump administration officials discussed an imminent military strike on Yemen within the group chat—apparently unaware that a member of the press was among them.
“This is a stunning breach of security,” French wrote. “I’ve helped investigate numerous allegations of classified information spillages, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News host and recent appointee to the Pentagon’s top post, has come under sharp scrutiny just weeks into his tenure. The mishap has sparked concerns from both national security experts and lawmakers about the administration’s protocols for handling classified material.
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French made clear that in any standard military chain of command, a mistake of this scale would have severe consequences. “There is no officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that,” he wrote. “Instant consequences would follow, followed by a comprehensive investigation and, potentially, criminal charges.”
While it remains unclear whether the incident meets the legal threshold for criminal liability, French concluded that the magnitude of the lapse demands accountability. “A security breach that significant requires a thorough investigation,” he stated, underscoring his belief that Hegseth’s resignation is the only honorable path forward.
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