Republican Senator Calls For Hearings Over Hegseth Reportedly Going Behind Trump’s Back On Weapons Order
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) called on Friday for Senate hearings into reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not inform President Donald Trump of a pause in sending weapons to Ukraine last week, something Trump has since reversed.
Young told The Hill’s Alexander Bolton, “We need to do our oversight here, ask our questions of this administration just as we have previous administrations. We need to hold hearings and ask questions and learn what’s going on.”
Bolton spoke to several Republican senators and their top aides who sounded the alarm on the issue. “To hear there may have been other pauses or this pause went on longer than any of us know, to me that’s alarming,” said a Republican senator who spoke to Bolton, requesting anonymity.
“I would elevate this to being beyond concerned, to being alarmed. It’s not like we’re talking to a small arms sale to some African nation, this is Ukraine. This is like the biggest political debate. … This is not something where you have your Secretary of Defense or your assistant or your deputy not be in sync with your president.”
“I find it alarming that you would not have greater understanding as to what is our plan here. That’s kind of scary,” added the GOP senator.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the most pro-Ukraine voices in the Senate, also spoke to Bolton and said the Senate needs to get to “the bottom” of who exactly who ordered the freeze. “We’ll get to the bottom of that later,” Graham insisted.
Young’s call for hearings comes a day after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) slammed Hegseth on CNN. “With the passing of time, I think it’s clear he’s out of his depth as a manager of a large complex organization,” Tillis told Jake Tapper.
Tillis later added, “I mean, this whole idea of having a pause in Ukraine defensive arms, that’s just amateurish. That’s from somebody who doesn’t understand large organization dynamics.”
“So, you know, I don’t regret the decision I made back then — based on the facts as I knew them then. But today, I am beginning to wonder if maybe [the Senate] Armed Services [committee] was a little bit generous with respect to their assessment of his capabilities as a manager of the world’s largest, most complex, and arguably consequential organization,” Tillis said, suggesting Hegseth would not get his vote for confirmation today.
Questions over exactly who ordered the pause of weapons to Ukraine began bubbling up late last week when Republican Congressman Don Bacon (R-NE) suggested on Friday that top Pentagon official Elbridge Colby may have gone rogue in stopping the shipments.
Bacon, a former U.S. Air Force brigadier general, wrote on X Friday, “Congress wants answers here. Did Under Secretary Colby do this on his own without approval? The President said he was not notified nor did he approve the halt in weapon shipments to Ukraine.”
CNN reported this week, however, that Hegseth was behind it. “Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, according to five sources familiar with the matter, setting off a scramble inside the administration to understand why the halt was implemented and explain it to Congress and the Ukrainian government,” CNN reported on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he did not know who paused the weapons.
