Defense Department officials announced Friday new senior advisers to Secretary Pete Hegseth to fill the void left by the turnover in his staff over the last couple of weeks.
Sean Parnell, who has served as the assistant to the defense secretary for public affairs, will continue in that role and assume the position of senior adviser to the secretary. Justin Fulcher, Patrick Weaver, and Ricky Buria were also announced as senior advisers.
They are replacing two of Hegseth’s former staffers, Darin Selnick and Dan Caldwell, who were fired last week after being implicated in an investigation into media leaks.
Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, also left his role in recent days. Despite comments from the secretary earlier this week that Kasper would be staying at the Pentagon, he has instead opted to advise the department as a special government employee, according to Politico, which limits him to performing temporary jobs for just 130 days a year.
“Regular workforce adjustments are a feature of any highly efficient organization,” acting Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement. “Secretary Hegseth will continue to be proactive with personnel decisions and will work hard to ensure the Department of Defense has the right people in the right positions to execute President Trump’s agenda.”
The department did not announce who would fill the vacancy left by Kasper’s departure.
Kasper launched the investigation last month that resulted in the firings of Selnick, Caldwell, and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary. They deny responsibility for leaking information to the media.
At the time the leaks occurred, Hegseth reportedly threatened to “hook” Adm. Christopher Grady, then-acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, up “to a f***ing polygraph!” according to the Wall Street Journal. Grady did not take a polygraph, and Hegseth accused others of being responsible for the leaks.
In addition to those departures, former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot left this month, claiming that “Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.”
Ullyot held positions leading communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs during the first Trump administration and is a Hegseth loyalist despite his criticism.
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Hegseth is also facing an inspector general evaluation for his use of Signal, an unsecured messaging platform, including the sharing of details of an impending military operation with people in his personal life who did not have any need to know.
Alex Plitsas, an expert with the Atlantic Council who previously worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told the Washington Examiner that the culmination of stories from inside the Pentagon “presents a picture of poor judgment and a toxic work culture that’s going to continue to serve as a distraction.”