Pete Hegseth has hired a team of MAGA influencers who routinely support the defense secretary online for secret roles within the Pentagon, according to a report.
The Washington Post found that several former military personnel turned online conservative mouthpieces have been given government roles that the Pentagon has not publicly disclosed.
They include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel with more than 130,000 followers on X; Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel with more than 620,000 followers; and Thomas Anderson, a retired colonel who regularly defends the embattled Hegseth to his 323,000 X followers under the online moniker “CynicalPublius.”
All three were given active official government email addresses with the “.civ” suffix, meaning they were considered civilian employees rather than military personnel or contractors. Because they were given civilian roles, the MAGA influencers could even change government policy, even as the Pentagon has not officially revealed what their roles are, sources told the Post.
Hegseth’s MAGA influencers were hired as “highly qualified experts” or “special government employees.” Under the law, SGEs are forbidden from working more than 130 days over a 365-day period.
While their specific roles are unclear, each influencer routinely supports Hegseth and President Donald Trump online or attacks those who criticize them. Maness wrote an article for the conservative news site Daily Caller last month demanding that Hegseth root out “disloyal” government employees who have “plagued the Pentagon and the broader federal bureaucracy for years.”
Schlichter also posted that “we are lucky” to have Hegseth while sharing a video of the defense secretary praising sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Those aboard the aircraft carrier have complained of dire working conditions and even feeling suicidal after spending several months deployed at sea.
As noted by The Bulwark, which first reported on how Hegseth is building a “Pentagon Troll Army,” several of the MAGA influencers rushed to defend another conservative mouthpiece after she was revealed to be a special government employee.
Jennica Pounds, also known as “DataRepublican” on X, falsely accused Sarah B. Rogers, the State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy, of trying to entrap her by giving her government secrets to leak online.
It was later revealed that Pounds, who has nearly 1 million X followers, had been hired as a special government employee by the Defense Department after serving as a journalist in Hegseth’s handpicked Pentagon press corps, which was full of MAGA influencers, in June.
“You can make a case that it’s unethical to continue reporting on your own while holding a government position. It would be a weak argument in her case. But it’s utterly ridiculous to think she’s taking marching orders and money to plant stories,” posted John Konrad, a former member of the U.S. Merchant Marine who previously said the Pentagon sought him out for an unspecified role.
Anderson also defended Pounds, saying she should not have to disclose her government role because civil servants are often “prohibited from revealing their status because of the sensitive nature of their work.”
Former Republican congressman and Trump critic Adam Kinzinger suggested that the revelation that Pounds was secretly working for the government would be the “scandal of the century” in any other administration.
“How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican Party that are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?” Kinzinger said.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon for comment.
