Sen. Coons Trashes Pete Hegseth for Bringing Wife Along to Military Meetings

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Source: Daily Beast

Updated Mar. 30 2025 8:21AM EDT
Published Mar. 30 2025 12:17AM EDT


A Democratic senator has taken aim at Trump’s secretary of defense following reports that his wife has been accompanying him to high-level military meetings. Earlier this week, it was reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife Jennifer Rauchet has been spotted at high-level intelligence meetings on at least two occasions, including one at the Pentagon involving Hegseth and his U.K. counterpart John Healey.

While spouses of senior officials are often granted low-level security clearance, it is considerably less common for them to accompany their partners to high-level meetings.

Appearing on MSNBC’s The Weekend, Delaware Senator Chris Coons said of the reports, “That’s not normal at all. Look, I’ve traveled overseas on congressional delegation trips with Republicans and Democrats. On some of those trips, our spouses come along with us [but] they are not allowed in any secret, sensitive, classified meeting with foreign heads of state, with foreign officials.”

He continued, “Those meetings are usually conducted separately from any sort of a spouse program. Just because… Secretary Hegseth has one of the highest levels of classification access, he can’t just hand that to his wife and say, ‘Here, honey, hold my beer and hold my classified information.‘” “It just doesn’t work that way,” Coons concluded.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/sen-coons-trashes-pete-hegseth-for-bringing-wife-along-to-military-meetings/