A second member of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s inner circle has been placed on leave after an investigation into leaks of potentially sensitive information. Darin Selnick, the Defense Department’s deputy chief of staff, was suspended from duty and escorted out of the building. This came on the heels of another Hegseth aide, Dan Caldwell, being escorted out of the Pentagon; see .

Selnick is a retired Air Force officer and, like Caldwell, was part of a group Hegseth brought with him from Concerned Veterans for America. During Trump 1.0, Selnick served as Veterans Affairs Advisor on the Domestic Policy Council at the White House and as a senior advisor to the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Before becoming deputy chief of staff, he’d been acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

According to reports, the investigation ordered by Hegseth’s Chief of Staff, Joe Kasper, focused on leaks about the military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon (), and pausing the collection of intelligence for Ukraine. 

Right now, it is difficult to know what to make of the sequence of events. Hegseth’s chief of staff served in the first Trump administration and was Duncan Hunter’s chief of staff on Capitol Hill. Either Hegseth brought into his inner circle a couple of men who traded on that relationship to raise their profile or push a personal agenda. Caldwell, for instance, was known to oppose any military action against Iran and was generally hostile to US aid to Israel.

Dan Caldwell, a top advisor to Defense Chief Pete Hegseth, was escorted out of the Pentagon after being named in a Department of Defense leaks investigation.

Caldwell didn’t toe the usual line on foreign policy. He openly challenged the Washington consensus on Israel, saying the… pic.twitter.com/O2ZoVSNmXd

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) April 15, 2025

On the other hand, we know the left has the long knives out for Hegseth (see and ), and depriving him of trusted aides would be one way of weakening him.

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