Three senior advisers to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll—were abruptly ousted this week amid an expanding probe into alleged information leaks.
The trio, all veterans and key figures in the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to reform the Pentagon, have publicly condemned their dismissals as unjust and politically motivated.
In a joint statement, Caldwell—an advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff; and Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg—expressed profound disappointment over their treatment, asserting that they were never informed of the specific allegations against them.
Read their full joint statement below:
“We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.
All three of us served our country honorably in uniform – for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And, based on our collective service, we understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it.
At this time, we still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of “leaks” to begin with.
While this experience has been unconscionable, we remain supportive of the Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again and achieve peace through strength. We hope in the future to support those efforts in different capacities.”
Hellbound and Down 