Pete Hegseth’s Chief of Staff Is OUT As Pentagon Loses 5th Top Official In Days: ‘It Was a Knife Fight’

 (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lost a fifth top aide on Thursday as it was reported that his chief of staff, who grabbed headlines in recent days for all the wrong reasons, would exit his role.

Politico’s Jack Detsch and Daniel Lippman first reported the news and added, “Joe Kasper was originally expected to transition to another role within the Defense Department, but is now planning to go back to government relations and consulting, he said in an interview.”

Kasper’s exit comes following the firing of other top aides, some of whom were close friends of Hegseth, amid a leak investigation. Politico noted, “Some officials saw the wave of firings as a bid by Kasper to consolidate power.”

“Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary’s ear. He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight,” a source inside the Pentagon told Politico.

Kasper made headlines in recent days as being central in the “chaos” at the Pentagon, which was described in detail by the New York Times earlier in the week. The Times took a deep dive into the people around Hegseth on Tuesday as Greg Jaffe and Helene Cooper reported that “chaos prevails at the Pentagon.” The Times report dropped a day after Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a former Air Force general, slammed Hegseth as an “amateur person” whose behavior should not be tolerated in one of the most critical roles for national security in the U.S. government.

The report offered some color on the dynamics in Hegseth’s office, writing, “Mr. Hegseth’s inner circle of close advisers — military veterans who, like him, had little experience running large, complex organizations — is in shambles. Three members of the team he brought with him into the Pentagon were accused last week of leaking unauthorized information and escorted from the building.”

The report also highlighted the behavior of Kasper. The Times wrote that meetings run by Kasper often “meander or take pointlessly bawdy turns.”

“One meeting Mr. Kasper led this month, with a group that works with veterans that was offering its services to the Pentagon, devolved into a recounting of an evening Mr. Kasper and a representative of the group spent at a Washington strip club, said a person who took part in the session,” reported the Times, which concluded at the time that Kasper was likely on his way out.