FOG OF WAR: Early reporting says a Pentagon investigation found that defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked the lives of American forces when he shared details of an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen over the unsecured Signal app.

  Back in March Hegseth detailed the attack in his messages from his personal phone and accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic magazine as the attack was under way. He also … intentionally … included his wife and brother in the chain. Hegseth has claimed he did not reveal classified information even though he was leaking information about an attack that the Houthis didn’t know about yet.

  He was so specific that one line said, “This is DEFINITELY when the first bombs will drop.”

  At the time Hegseth said, “Nobody was texting war plans.”

  CNN reports according to unnamed sources that, “The report states that Hegseth should not have used Signal and that senior Defense Department officials need better training on protocols.”

  It also says that in addition to sharing sensitive information with unauthorized people, Hegseth failed to preserve a record of the Signal exchanges. 

  It’s telling that the content of the report was leaked to the press, suggesting that there are people in the Pentagon who want to get rid of Pistol Pete. The report revealed that Hegseth refused to be interviewed by representatives of the inspector general and submitted his version of events in writing.

  A classified version of the report was sent to Congress on Tuesday and an unclassified version is expected to be released to the public today.

FILL ‘ER UP: Surrounded by automobile executives in the Oval Office, President Trump said the Transportation Department would significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks, gutting the Biden administration push for reducing use of gasoline and moving toward electric cars. The administration claimed the changes would save Americans $109 billion over five years and cut $1,000 off the average cost of a new car.

  Trump said the Biden standards were “a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.”

 THE REGIME: 

— Donald Trump hands out pardons like party favors … Republican party favors. Now Trump says he will pardon  Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar who, with his wife, was indicted under the Biden administration on charges of taking $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil company and a Mexican bank.

   Trump claims it was a political prosecution because Cuellar was critical of President Biden’s border control policies. “Sleepy Joe went after the Congressman, and even the Congressman’s wonderful wife, Imelda, simply for speaking the TRUTH,” Trump wrote on his social media feed.

  Trump this week also pardoned real estate developer Timothy J. Leiweke who had been charged by the president’s own Justice Department with a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for the Moody Center Arena at the University of Texas to benefit his own company. At the time of  Leiweke’s indictment in June, the Justice Department celebrated it as a big win in the fight against corruption.

  In one email recovered by the Justice Department, Leiweke wrote that “we were very clever to put together an agreement that scared everyone else away” adding that “this allows us to dictate terms to the university.”

  The White House has not said why he was pardoned.

— Speaking of “sleepy.” Trump repeatedly nodded off during Tuesday’s 90-minute cabinet meeting after declaring that he is “sharper than I was 25 years ago.” The only thing that didn’t put him to sleep was his own speech.

— As the Pentagon posted a photo of the “new” Defense department press corps composed of true believers and right wing influencers, The NY Times sued claiming the new requirement that journalists must pledge not to solicit any unauthorized information violates the First and Fifth amendments, calling it “an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes.”

— Nearly nine months after the Trump administration seized control of the US Institute of Peace headquarters nearly shutting it down, the institute is re-opening under a new name, “Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace.” The White House told the NY Times that the re-naming serves “as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.” 

  It’s also part of Trump’s quest for the Nobel Peace Prize.

THE EPSTEIN FILES: Former Jeffrey Epsetein sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell said in a letter that she plans to ask a federal court to free her from her 20-year prison sentence on a sex-trafficking conviction. On what grounds she would be released hasn’t been revealed.

  In the meantime, Senate Democrats released pictures and video of the home on the private island where the late Epstein trafficked in underage girls. If bad taste could also be a crime …

THE SPIN RACK: The doctor who supplied fatal ketamine to actor Matthew Perry was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison. — The real estate industry is pressuring the website Zillow to eliminate information about weather risks for homes such as floods, high winds, or wildfires saying it is often inaccurate and discourages sales. — Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the disgraced former Prince Andrew, and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, have been given an exit date of January 31 to move out of their longtime home, the Royal Lodge. He’s moving to a home paid for by his brother, King Charles, and she’s looking for a new place to live.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Columnist Scott Hodge writes in The Washington Post that a dozen universities are on the hook to pay a total of $228 million to fired football coaches. LSU alone will be paying $54 million to former coach Brian Kelly. Much of the payouts will come from tax-deductible donations, causing Hodge to wonder what taxpayers get for subsidizing this. 

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