SerpApi.Org
A senior Pentagon official has been placed on leave after he was secretly filmed criticizing President Donald Trump’s administration and the changes it has implemented at the Department of Defense.
Right-wing activist James O’Keefe released a video on Wednesday reportedly showing Brandon Newsom, a senior official in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, being filmed with a hidden camera. Newsweek has not independently verified the footage.
In the footage, Newsom can be heard saying that he wanted to “stay and stick it out” at the Pentagon, adding: “So that way, when the time comes, I can undo whatever’s been done [by the Trump administration].” When asked about what he would undo, he talked of “a lot of times” when working at the Pentagon “challenges my morals,” saying he would not have “one specific prayer service” and undo employee “schedule policy.”
He also called Trump “a textbook narcissist” and described the Iran war as “completely stupid” and “driven by one man’s ego.”
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao later said that Newsom had been suspended.
“The Department of the Navy takes the conduct shown in this video extremely seriously. Such statements and apparent intent to leverage a position to undermine the policies and direction set by our elected leaders are inappropriate and incompatible with the standards expected of Department personnel,” he wrote on X.
“Effective immediately, this individual has been placed on administrative leave while we determine next steps to ensure accountability and protect the integrity of our mission.”
Newsweek contacted the Pentagon and the U.S. Navy for comment by email on Thursday morning, outside of standard working hours.
Under Hegseth, Pentagon Is Getting Major Reshuffle – And Officials Are Being Ousted
Since Trump’s return to the White House, and especially following the start of the Iran war in late February, the Pentagon has faced growing scrutiny over a series of actions against defence and national-security officials whose views or assessments clashed with the president’s public position.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was fired in August 2025 after his agency produced an initial assessment finding that U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were less effective than Trump had claimed they were.
In April this year, three Pentagon officials – Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Hegseth, Darin Selnick, the Pentagon’s deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg – were put on administrative leave in stated leak investigations that they have called unjust.
In a joint statement posted by Caldwell on X in April, they wrote: “We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended. Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” In the statement, they said they were not even told what the leak investigations were allegedly about.
Before them, the Department of Defense fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top admiral in the Navy, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the top U.S. military lawyers, as reported by Reuters.
These firings have largely been framed as part of a wider reshuffle of the Pentagon under the leadership of Trump-nominated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has sought to refocus the Department of Defense on “warfighting,” going as far as renaming it the Department of War.
Hegseth, a self-declared Christian nationalist, has also pushed onto the Pentagon the same militant Christian theology he himself embraces, introducing monthly voluntary Christian worship services at the Pentagon – what Newsom described in the chat with O’Keefe as “prayer service.” All of the prayer meetings were presided over by evangelicals.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and Cristina Diciu.
Related Articles
