A Democratic senator has taken aim at Trump’s secretary of defense following reports that his wife has been accompanying him to high-level military meetings.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife Jennifer Rauchet has been spotted at high-level intelligence meetings on at least two occasions, including one at the Pentagon involving Hegseth and his U.K. counterpart John Healey.
While spouses of senior officials are often granted low-level security clearance, it is considerably less common for them to accompany their partners to high-level meetings.
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Appearing on MSNBC’s The Weekend, Delaware Senator Chris Coons said of the reports, “That’s not normal at all. Look, I’ve traveled overseas on congressional delegation trips with Republicans and Democrats. On some of those trips, our spouses come along with us [but] they are not allowed in any secret, sensitive, classified meeting with foreign heads of state, with foreign officials.”
He continued, “Those meetings are usually conducted separately from any sort of a spouse program. Just because… Secretary Hegseth has one of the highest levels of classification access, he can’t just hand that to his wife and say, ‘Here, honey, hold my beer and hold my classified information.‘”
“It just doesn’t work that way,” Coons concluded.
Hegseth appears determined to make the Department of Defense a family business—he recently hired his younger brother, Phil Hegseth, as a Pentagon aide.
Deputy Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told the AP, “Phil Hegseth, one of a number of talented DHS liaisons to DOD, is conducting touch points with U.S. Coast Guard officials on the Secretary’s Indo-Pacific trip.” His official title is “senior adviser to the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and liaison officer to the Defense Department.”
Hegseth had previously hired his brother to work at his non-profit, Concerned Veterans for America. Phil has a degree in communications and journalism, and previously ran a podcast production consulting agency. Hegseth met Rauchet when she was a producer on Fox & Friends, which Pete co-hosted from 2017 to 2024.
