How the Senate Grilled Pete Hegseth on Military Purges, Insider Trading, and a War He Helped Start

Before a secretary of defense decides he won’t respond to a question, there’s a certain silence in a Senate hearing room. Pete Hegseth is an expert at remaining silent. Hegseth spent the better part of a tense morning in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 30th, sitting next to a composed and generally quiet Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Hegseth’s stance, which has become something of a signature for him, was somewhere between defending himself and going on the attack.

The Pentagon’s proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal year 2027 was the main topic of discussion during the hearing. Hegseth presented this startling figure as a generational correction following years of what he described as hollowed-out military capability. There was some logic to that framing. The claim that America’s defense industrial base has contracted—that production lines are slower and stockpiles are thinner than what a contemporary conflict would require—is not a fringe viewpoint. However, the budget itself was essentially irrelevant. The committee’s Democrats were prepared and had different goals in mind.

Senator Elizabeth Warren received what may have been the morning’s most television-ready exchange. She presented dates, figures, and a very particular pattern: on March 23, traders wagered $500 million on oil-related bets on Polymarket, just fourteen minutes before President Trump posted about “very good conversations” toward ending the Iran war. On April 7th, the same pattern recurred. On April 21st, once more. Within minutes, there was a spike in trades, a presidential appointment, and a dramatic change in oil prices.

Warren’s point was clear: information was being traded by someone with access to it. She said, “It looks like insiders have been making out like bandits,” and her words kind of thudded into the room. The timing was not specifically addressed in Hegseth’s response, which stated that everything his department did was “above board.” That might be because there wasn’t a clear response.

The additional query concerning Hegseth’s personal broker was what made the situation more bizarre. Prior to the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, the Financial Times had revealed in late March that Hegseth’s broker had tried to buy millions of shares in a defense industry fund. Any secretary of defense is prohibited by federal law from holding stock in the top ten defense contractors. Hegseth’s ethics agreement made it clear that he would personally approve any purchases of non-cash investments.

Perhaps the most memorable statement of the hearing was Hegseth’s response to Warren’s question about whether his broker was receiving that sign-off: “I’ll give it to you as a big fat negative.” Soon after, he entered that ethics agreement into the congressional record. It was a deliberate action.

Another wound that would not heal was the dismissal of senior military officers. Ranking member Jack Reed went through a now-familiar list of complaints: that Hegseth had fired dozens of generals and admirals while in office, that about 60% of those fired were Black or female, and that the departures had nothing to do with performance. Merit is the only metric, Hegseth reiterated. He refused to talk about the particulars of each departure.

In certain rooms, that response has been adequate. Here, it wasn’t very effective. Even Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who seldom invests political funds in Democratic talking points, stopped the hearing to read aloud the combat records of two generals who had been specifically fired: former Army Chief of Staff Randy George and former Vice Chief James Mingus. Ernst expressed what appeared to be sincere dissatisfaction with the way their retirements had been handled. Hegseth nodded slightly, sat with it, and went on.

The entire situation was practically overshadowed by the Iran War. Reed began by pointing out that it had been almost a year since Hegseth had last appeared before this committee. During that time, the US had gone to war with Iran, bombed Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and Ecuador, and sent thousands of troops to American cities like Washington, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Hegseth retorted that the “defeatist words” and “reckless naysayers” of congressional Democrats were the “biggest adversary” facing the mission.

This statement may sound good on some cable channels, but it sounds a little strange in a room where the legal clock was ticking. A president must request congressional reauthorization following sixty days of military action, according to the War Powers Act of 1973. The deadline was drawing near. Some constitutional scholars would fiercely disagree with Hegseth’s legal interpretation, which holds that the ongoing ceasefire paused the clock. However, this is the kind of argument that is typically settled slowly in courts, long after the moment has passed.

As this develops, it seems that Hegseth plays a role that is partially based on confrontation, and that his combative approach is essential to his tenure rather than incidental. He survived a brutal confirmation battle, came to the Pentagon with preexisting enemies, and has since governed in a way that seems purposefully meant to provoke. It’s another matter entirely whether that instinct benefits the organization he oversees. After one morning of hearings, it is unlikely that the questions about who knew what, when, and traded on it will go away given the size of the budget he came to defend and the ongoing wars it is supposed to finance.