Ousted Pentagon adviser says ‘I don’t know’ if Hegseth is OK as Trump predicts ‘he’ll get it together’
A top Pentagon official who was ousted in a dramatic purge earlier this month has criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for being preoccupied with disclosures to the press — while President Trump stood by the former Fox News personality and predicted that “he’s gonna get it together” in an interview published Monday.
Colin Carroll, former chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, responded: “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not sure” when podcaster Megyn Kelly asked of Hegseth “Do you think he’s OK?” during a lengthy interview released Friday.
“He was very focused on the leaks, and I think it’s kind of consumed the team a little bit,” Carroll added. “If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50% of it is probably [the] leak investigation.”
“That’s a bad thing for America, it’s a bad thing for the president’s objectives,” added Carroll, 40, who was placed on leave April 16 and later dismissed along with senior adviser Dan Caldwell and deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick.
Around the same time, former top spokesman John Ullyot parted ways with DOD and penned a scathing Politico op-ed predicting Hegseth would soon be out of a job.
The White House has publicly stood by the defense secretary, with Trump telling The Atlantic magazine: “I think he’s gonna get it together. I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.”
“I have observed a Pete that .?.?. crushes it in meetings,” Carroll told Kelly of Hegseth’s ability, before adding that at other times he would?become fixated on “weird details” and easily “agitated.”
“It’s a tale of two Petes,” Carroll summed up, later adding: “My observation from the first 90 days, and this is going to sound weird, is that we had less of a problem from deep state bureaucrats in the department than we did from maybe some people on our own team.”
Last week, a source familiar with the situation told The Post that the firings of Caldwell, Carroll and Selnick were the result of a “turf war” waged by Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s then-chief of staff, who was also transferred out of his role and later decided to depart the Pentagon for the private sector.
The source told The Post at the time that Caldwell and Selnick were being given more of Kasper’s portfolio, including “recommendations on appointments, decisions on high-level official visits and official travel planning — much of what was emerging as a priority for that given week.”
“[Kasper] wasn’t an effective manager and balls were being dropped, decisions were not made, etc.,” the source added. “He’s a nice guy but a poor manager.”
“Joe’s a nuanced person, because he’s not like a complete idiot,” Carroll told Kelly of Kasper, who accused Carroll and Caldwell last week of trying to gin up an inspector general investigation against him.
Kasper told Drop Site News that there had been an anonymous complaint filed accusing him of illegal drug use, which he denies. In Kasper’s telling, Carroll had been contacted by Politico reporter Daniel Lippman to ask about the rumored watchdog probe. According to the outlet, Caldwell told Carroll to pass the inquiry on to chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.
When asked about the controversy, Carroll told Kelly that “I … know what drug users look like and how they act. I can say that Joe was super erratic, and he would be totally normal in one thing and then totally not normal another.”
Carroll added that he wished that the Pentagon had conducted a more thorough investigation into leaks, similar to the one that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s team conducted, which has led to two criminal referrals to the Justice Department, with a third expected.
“I think that there are leakers,” he admitted. “I think that if there’s a path to be exonerated, we should have been placed on administrative leave and investigated. I would have been totally comfortable with that.”
“We’re not disgruntled former employees,” Carroll stressed. “I’m just a person that literally upended my entire life to come back into the department [after leaving in 2021].”
Hegseth told “Fox & Friends” last week that the Pentagon will make referrals for prosecution once the leak investigation wraps up. Carroll called that interview a “bad move,” suggesting that Hegseth was unprepared and agreed to the sit-down just to appear “combative” for the president.
When asked if he would return to the Pentagon, Carroll said the department suffers from “a culture of, kind of fear and toxicity that can be really hard to recover from” and jeopardizes Trump’s agenda, including building a “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
“The idea there was dysfunction is an argument of convenience, which, in hindsight, is being weaponized by a small group who are rallying against the president and the secretary in their own interests,” Kasper said in a statement read by Kelly that listed off accomplishments from the first 90 days of Trump’s term such as boosted military recruitment.
“That’s not dysfunction, that’s success,” Kasper added. “Colin wasn’t part of any of it. I wish him all the best. He’s a smart guy with unlimited potential.”
The Post reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
