Summary:
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under scrutiny after reports surfaced that he might have opened an account with the Russian email service mail.ru.
This comes as a new twist as the Signal chat scandal involving senior Trump administration officials continues to unfold.
Following reports that top advisers to US President Donald Trump used a commercial communication app to discuss a military strike on Yemen and included a journalist in the chat by mistake, reporters from the German magazine Der Spiegel questioned how easily accessible the personal data of key US officials might be.
Through an editorial investigation, they discovered that mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and even passwords belonging to high-ranking US officials had been found online.
Among those exposed were Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, putting the security practices of Trump’s top security officials into question.
Journalists used public databases – including those pertaining to data breaches – to uncover the information. The leaked contacts were linked to various online platforms, including Instagram, LinkedIn, Dropbox, WhatsApp and Signal.
For Hegseth’s data, Der Spiegel reporters simply contacted a commercial provider of contact information primarily used by companies for sales, marketing and recruitment purposes.
The reporters submitted a link to his LinkedIn profile and received Hegseth’s Gmail address, phone number, and other details in return. The same technique was used to obtain Waltz’s information, which was found alongside passwords in open databases connected to Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp.
Gabbard, meanwhile, appeared to take more precautions, but journalists still located her email addresses on WikiLeaks and Reddit.
Hegseth’s alleged Russian email address
After the investigation, Finnish disinformation researcher Pekka Kallioniemi published a screenshot from an alleged database compiling past data breaches that purportedly showed an email address owned by Hegseth under the mail.ru domain.
He questioned on social media why the Pentagon chief would have a Russian email account, though he did not confirm whether it was genuine or fabricated.
“This particular leak is from 2016, so the account was created before that. The password used was consistent with other similar accounts allegedly linked to Hegseth,” Kallioniemi wrote.
This is all bullshit. I can guarantee you his handler opened that and not him. Slander i tell you.
He questioned on social media why the Pentagon chief would have a Russian email account, though he did not confirm whether it was genuine or fabricated.
So, in short someone alleged that he has an email address at mail.ru but nobody has actually verified if that’s actually true or utter bullshit.
This is such a click bait-y non-story. Like I would not be surprised at all if it was true, and if it was this would be a pretty massive deal that raises a lot of questions (plus even if true there could still be reasonable explanations), but without verification this is nothing at all. I could just as easily claim I have photos of Trump fellating Putin and it would be just as big a story as this
The allegations from comparing various password leaks are that it’s the same password as for known Hegseth accounts. I get that nothing is verified - someone could have discovered that password in a leak and reused it as a setup - but that’s the strongest corroboration.
In Russia, email account has you!
“investigative journalists have identified the email: xx69DeezNuts69xx@putin.ru”
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