Ousted Pentagon adviser says Hegseth consumed by leaks as Trump predicts hell get it together

A top Pentagon official who was ousted in a dramatic purge earlier this month has criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for being preoccupied with disclosures to the press — while President Trump stood by the former Fox News personality and predicted that “he’s gonna get it together” in an interview published Monday.“He was very focused on the leaks, and I think it’s kind of consumed the team a little bit,” Colin Carroll, former chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, told podcaster Megyn Kelly of Hegseth in a lengthy interview released Friday.“If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50% of it is probably leak investigation.”“That’s a bad thing for America, it’s a bad thing for the president’s objectives,” added Carroll, 40, who was placed on leave April 16 and later dismissed along with senior adviser Dan Caldwell and deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick.Around the same time, former top spokesman John Ullyot parted ways with DOD and penned a scathing Politico op-ed predicting Hegseth would soon be out of a job.The White House has publicly stood by the defense secretary, with Trump telling The Atlantic magazine: “I think he’s gonna get it together.

I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.”“I have observed a Pete that is one Pete and crushes it in meetings,” Carroll told Kelly of Hegseth’s ability, adding that there are also times that the Pentagon chief becomes fixated on “weird details” and easily “agitated.”“It’s a tale of two Petes,” Carroll summed up, later adding: “My observation from the first 90 days, and this is going to sound weird, is that we had less of a problem from deep state bureaucrats in the department than we did from maybe some people on our own team.”Last week, a source familiar with the situation told The Post that the firings of Caldwell, Carroll and Selnick were the result of a “turf war” waged by Joe K...