This is the part where Pete Hegseth resigns

But will he actually? Probably not. Yet Signalgate will continue to grind on, even if (or especially if) its principal players refuse to leave the stage.

Sometimes a scandal takes out its central player(s) in one clean swipe of the Grim Reaper’s scythe. This is what happened to former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, for example: one devastating article by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker detailing Schneiderman’s alleged violence toward four of his female romantic partners over the years, and Schneiderman resigned a mere three hours later.

Other scandals feature a one-two punch, or a second shoe dropping. This is what is now happening to Pete Hegseth.

It was bad enough that Hegseth had shared the detailed plans of an air strike, before it was carried out, on a non-secure Signal chat with other senior members of the administration (and, unfortunately for them, but fortunately for America and the safety of our pilots and all our service members, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who blew the whistle).

It’s even worse that Hegseth shared the same strike plans on a second Signal chat — with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, among others — as we learned yesterday. Deeply on-brand for this administration, Hegseth’s wife and brother were nepotistically bestowed “jobs” at the Pentagon, but even so, neither of them should have been privy to the strike plans nor had they any reason or justification for knowing about them.

So in many scandals, this would be the part where Pete Hegseth would resign.

Is Pete Hegseth listening to his wife’s thoughts on the latest air strike? Or his brother’s thoughts on improving military capabilities in key theaters? Or is he just a complete embarrassment who is unfit to serve? Perhaps all of the above.

Except that there is an excellent chance that he is not going to do so. Again, total shamelessness, self-absorption, and perverse, twisted dereliction of duty are among the diabolically evil toolkit of powers possessed by these far-right opportunists and mediocrities, from Trump all the way down. They utterly lack honor or competence, and they utterly fail to recognize those facts. Ever.

Yet it does not matter. The Signalgate scandal will boil and bubble on regardless of Hegseth’s presence or absence from the stage — in fact, it may burn all the more if Hegseth stays put.

Why?

There is, by all reports, complete chaos at the Pentagon right now. Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was just pushed out, and three of Hegseth’s staffers were terminated for leaking information — but not the information you think. This reportedly arose from a separate internal investigation by Kasper into possible non-Signalgate leaking to reporters.

In other words, while Hegseth is being investigated for improperly sharing defense information, Hegseth and Kasper were investigating other DOD staffers for improperly sharing different defense information, and now Kasper himself is leaving for some other role at the Pentagon (supposedly).

Yet we really don’t know the whole story here yet. Was Hegseth merely purging his inner circle of perceived disloyalty, of leakers sharing with reporters? Or was Hegseth more specifically purging staffers who were cooperating with the ongoing investigation into Signalgate by DOD Acting Inspector General Stephen A. Stebbins? Or staffers who were about to cooperate with Stebbins? And even if those staffers were not already cooperating with Stebbins, don’t you think that maybe they might be more inclined to do so after Hegseth just fired them?

No matter what, this is, shall we say, not so good for Hegseth.

Pro tip: when you are being personally investigated by your agency’s internal watchdog, it is not a terribly good look when four members of your inner circle are suddenly pushed out of their roles.

And to be clear, how do we know about this second Signal chat with Hegseth’s wife and brother?

Because four people with knowledge of the chat talked to the New York Times!!! And I would bet there is a very high chance that at least one of the four was one of the staffers Hegseth just pushed out.

If the old World War II message of “loose lips sink ships” is true, then at this rate America will be lucky if it still has a single Navy vessel afloat by July 4.

Again, to be clear — it does not appear that any of this resulted from Stebbins’s investigation, and yet Stebbins of course will take testimony and documentary evidence from everyone involved, including the people Hegseth just knifed.

Stebbins is now operating in what we can very appropriately call a target-rich environment.

And this is before we even get to the report Stebbins will eventually issue, and what will then happen in the Senate Armed Services Committee, where both the Republican chair and the Democratic ranking member appear inclined to get to the bottom of Signalgate.

It is clear that the longer the Hegseth clown car remains parked at the Pentagon, the longer the scandal circus will remain in town, and the worse Signalgate will become for Trump.

And don’t worry, Michael Waltz. No one has forgotten about you — and your twenty Signal group chats on various theaters of conflict around the world. Your time will come soon.