Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth angrily shouted at a representative from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency in a tense Pentagon confrontation, according to a report.
During the showdown in early April, the defense secretary reportedly yelled at the Defense Department’s former DOGE team lead after the staffer was accused of calling the Pentagon police on one of his subordinates to have him removed from the building.
The tongue-lashing took place after the subordinate, a DOGE lieutenant named Justin Fulcher, stormed into Hegseth’s office and complained that his boss, Yinon Weiss, had reported him to the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, The Washington Post reported.
Hegseth then confronted Weiss and, raising his voice at times, demanded to know why Weiss thought he possessed the authority to call the PFPA, the Pentagon’s internal police and security force, sources told the Post.
It’s not clear what the original fight was about, or whether law enforcement was ever called. But Hegseth thought that even just the possibility that a DOGE official would act unilaterally to evict someone from the Pentagon was unacceptable, the Post reported.
Sources told the paper that Weiss tried to explain to Hegseth that he had complained about Fulcher to the Pentagon office that assists new political appointees, not the Pentagon police.
Fulcher, however, told the Post via text message that “no police were called and I didn’t see any,” but that “there was one person who was making claims that he was going to call the PFPA—that was clear.”
He declined to clarify whether he was referring to Weiss, who left DOGE this month. Fulcher remains a senior adviser to Hegseth—a role he was given just days after the April 4 confrontation that required Hegseth’s intervention.
The Post reported that it was strange for a Cabinet secretary to be personally involved in seemingly minor disciplinary issues between lower-level staff.
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell told the Daily Beast: “Justin Fulcher is a senior adviser to Secretary Hegseth. Our senior advisers at the Department of Defense are unified and working together to carry out President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s agenda.”
DOGE officials did not respond to the Post’s request for comment. The Daily Beast has also reached out.
The fight took place during a particularly ugly period for the embattled defense secretary. Less than two weeks earlier, The Atlantic magazine had revealed that Hegseth had shared Yemen attack plans in an unsecured group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal, without realizing that a journalist had been inadvertently added to the group.
In the meantime, the government’s nebulous cost-cutting task force headed by Tesla CEO Musk was causing other headaches for Hegseth besides the Pentagon police blow-up.
The secretary was plagued by news reports that the Defense Department planned to give Musk a classified briefing on potential military scenarios involving China, despite the billionaire’s extensive business ties to the country.
Hegseth—a former Fox News anchor whom Democrats and Republicans alike have accused of being in over his head—had reportedly become obsessed with finding the source of that and other leaks.
He abruptly fired three of his top aides in April and accused them of leaking information to the press. Hegseth’s former chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was also pushed out of the Pentagon following what insiders described as a vicious “turf war.”
At the same time, Musk and Hegseth were also locked in a battle of wills over military staffing and spending.
Despite publicly supporting DOGE’s efforts, behind the scenes, Hegseth opposed Musk’s attempts to cut civilians working in military hospitals, shipyards, munitions factories, and schools, The New York Times reported.
Their fight reportedly plunged the already beleaguered Pentagon even deeper into chaos.
