Trump fires the head of NSA, Cyber Command; Pentagon’s IG to investigate Hegseth’s involvement in ‘SignalGate’

Gen. Timothy Haugh, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of NSA, was fired Thursday, according to press reports and lawmakers. It was not immediately clear why Haugh was fired. However, his dismissal comes amid a purge of other national security officials at the National Security Council and NSA. It happened following a visit to the Oval Office of political activist Laura Loomer, who has urged President Donald Trump to fire certain officials due to their perceived disloyalty to him and his agenda. She posted a message last night on X saying Haugh and NSA Deputy Director Wendy Noble has been fired for being “disloyal” to Trump. Cybercom’s deputy commander, Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman, is in line to lead the command on an acting basis. The Defense Department’s top watchdog announced Thursday it will initiate a formal investigation into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s participation in discussing impending military operations on unclassified networks. On March 24, Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story revealing he was accidentally added to a group chat on Signal, an encrypted but unclassified commercial messaging app, where some of the Trump administration’s top national security officials discussed upcoming strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen — including Hegseth. “The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Steve Stebbins, acting inspector general at the Pentagon, wrote in a memo published Thursday. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.