A battle between aides in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon didn’t end when the entangled parties were ousted from the Pentagon, according to a Saturday report in The Guardian.
In fact, the spat seems to have become even more bitter, with one staffer reportedly making calls to establish whether another used cocaine at a previous job, in an effort to turn up dirt for a lawsuit.
Colin Carroll was one of three high-ranking Hegseth aides—along with Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick—who were fired earlier this month amid an investigation into whether they had leaked information to the media.
The three have since jointly decried their removals as “unconscionable,” and hinted that leaks were not the real reason they got the boot.
Several reports have suggested that it was actually the aides’ “knife fight” power struggle with Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, that led to the trio’s dismissal. Kasper, who faced accusations of inappropriate workplace behavior, also left the Pentagon this week.
But the conflict may have only just begun.
The Guardian reported that Carroll is considering filing a defamation suit against Kasper, and he has made calls to ask people close to Kasper about a tip that he used cocaine in a previous job.
Some of the calls reached Kasper’s former clients and his wife.
This has enraged Kasper. Reached by The Guardian for comment, he denied the claim, pointing to the Pentagon’s required drug testing. “It’s so egregiously stupid,” he said.
The Guardian reporter who broke the story, Hugo Lowell, appeared on MSNBC on Saturday. Much of his conversation with host Katie Phang centered on the allegation of drug use.
Phang called the cocaine claim “pretty hardcore,” adding: “This is the Department of Defense. This is national security. This is the welfare of not only our armed forces and the people that are sacrificing to be able to defend us, but it’s our safety. And this is the type of insanity that’s going on under Pete Hegseth’s tenure.”
Lowell agreed. “This is all happening while the U.S. is in really fraught negotiations with Putin over the Ukraine war, with the Iranians about their nuclear deal,” he said. “And the secretary of defense’s office is basically reduced to three people, plus the secretary himself.”
Before he was ousted, Kasper was accused of fostering a toxic workplace.
He reportedly derailed a meeting with a veterans’ group by telling a story about a night out at a Washington, D.C. strip club. He was also said to have begun a meeting by saying, “Can I just tell everyone around this table that I just took an enormous s--t right before coming in here?”
Kasper will remain an adviser at the Pentagon in a special government employee role, limited to working no more than 130 days a year.
