The Megyn Kelly Show
Exclusive: Alleged Pentagon "Leaker" Colin Carroll Speaks Out About Life Inside DOD, Hegseth's Leadership, and to Dispute Allegations | Ep. 1058
Sat, 26 Apr 2025
Megyn Kelly is joined by Colin Carroll, the former chief of staff to the Deputy Defense Secretary before he was fired last week over alleged leaks, to talk about what brought him to work in the Pentagon, how the firing went down, his side of the story about the leak investigations and leak timeline, his involvement with key players like Dan Caldwell and Joe Kasper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, what's happened since "Signalgate," the culture inside the DOD right now, the role the corporate media has played in the development of the story, and more. Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on goldCozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com/MEGYN & Use code MEGYN for up to 40% off Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Chapter 1: Who is Colin Carroll and what is his background?
And thanks for your service.
Thank you.
What branch of the military did you serve in?
I am still in the Marine Corps Reserve. Still in. I was active duty for a while.
Okay. And you were deployed?
I was deployed. Yes, ma'am.
Afghanistan?
Afghanistan three times. Wow.
Thank you. I appreciate it. So you wound up working in the Pentagon. How?
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Chapter 2: What roles did Colin Carroll and his colleagues hold at the Pentagon?
Sorry, until Trump One in November. That's correct. I joined this time around.
40.
Married. I have a wonderful baby boy. He's nine months old. My wife's pregnant, so we're having a second one here later this year. God love her. And she's probably going to kill me for saying that on TV, but I just did it. Yeah. I live in outside D.C. and I really, really wanted to go back to the Department of Defense.
In 2021, I was fired by the previous deputy secretary of defense, which is now I have the honor of having been fired by a deputy secretary and a secretary of defense, you know, in a five year period. Yeah. I really, really wanted to go back and I can, I can talk about why. Sure.
Yeah. Why'd you get fired first time?
Well, first time I got fired, uh, I worked at an organization called the joint AI center, the Jake, I was the chief operations officer. So I was responsible to make the organization function. Um, my job was to cut programs. Uh, I, I got there, they had a lot of bloat. My job was to reduce it to from 30 things to maybe five to eight things.
You were Doge before Doge was cool.
I was just for those is cool. And, uh, as a part of that, you know, I did not make friends in some places you take people's money away, but in, in that era in the department, you couldn't get rid of people. So there are just lots of unhappy people that didn't have any money to spend on their programs. And they, they, uh, you know, complained to the IG about me. There was a morale survey.
The morale was very low. The quote that I love the best is Colin Carroll had his foot on the throat of innovation at the Jake, which is really funny. Anybody that actually knows me knows that I'm a pretty innovative person and I'm very supportive of innovation, but that was enough to get me tossed. And I'll be honest, you know, I'm a Marine. I'm a direct person. I can be abrasive.
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Chapter 3: What led to the leak investigation and firings at the Department of Defense?
Because you need to be in communication with your counterpart over in the secretary's office. And that man was not receptive to dealing with you very well.
Yeah. And, you know, you can say, hey, I saw a thing that said something like packages. So if you people have listened here and have been in the department, understand that a package is basically like a decision paper that's coming from somewhere in the department that has to get staffed and coordinated properly. It's typically a really long process. It's arduous.
The last administration was non-functional because they couldn't make decisions because they really wanted consensus before a package came for a decision. Well, the department's like, there's 300 organizations. You're never going to get all of them to have consensus. But you still need at least some level of process to coordinate things and get them through and get them signed by the secretary.
We just really struggle with that process. It was people running in and out directly to the secretary. Hey, do this. People finding out about it weeks later or days later. And going like, how the hell did that even get signed? Like, I don't think the lawyers looked at that. Like that type of stuff. I'm all about moving fast and breaking things.
And people that know me know I move fast and break things. But I also try to do it in a way that protects my leadership and sets us up to actually execute the thing that we're trying to do.
It's hard to do if you're not even in on what's happening behind closed doors in the secretary's office.
Correct.
Can't really execute on that.
I mean, yeah, a little bit of a black hole up there. But my way around that was to talk to people like Dan and then Darren when he became the deputy chief or the deputy chief of staff. And I actually thought up until a week ago that we kind of worked a process by which we could function, I don't want to say like around Joe Casper, but just with Joe the way that he was.
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Chapter 4: What is the timeline and nature of the leak investigation at the Pentagon?
Oh, it's the Air Force.
They went with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, I think, Air Force OSI, which is, you know, the Air Force has Air Force OSI, Navy has NCIS, the Army has Army CID. These are like the criminal investigative units of the services. The Air Force was assigned to do this one.
It could have been anybody, but it was the Air Force.
I think it probably could have been anybody, but maybe the Air Force is like the executive agent to support the Office of Secretary of Defense. I'm not sure.
Okay.
But they started their investigation, and they've been doing an investigation in two weeks. I talked to them. So we were put on leave, and we were then terminated. So I was put on leave on a Wednesday, terminated on a Friday. The other guys were Tuesday. Air Force OSI, by the way, is doing its investigation. None of us talked to Air Force OSI.
I can walk you through how I was like escorted out, but it was, it was very funny. I mean, there are these two older gentlemen. One guy had been to Pentagon for 47 years. They came from Washington Headquarters Services, like administrative security. And, you know, the dude was like a national hero.
He was, he had a cane because he burned his legs with jet fuel on 9-11 trying to like save some other airmen's lives. And he was like an E-7 in the Air Force. Wow. And the other gentleman I came to, so it was the slowest perp walk of all time. I like walked down to this guy's, you know, room in the basement and they would walk me out after, you know, talking to me for 30 minutes. Super nice.
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Chapter 5: How did Colin Carroll experience his firing and what was his response?
Don't fault them at all. They just read me out of my clearances and then said, you know, like, what's going on? And I was like, what do you think this thing's going on? We had a conversation.
But were they the ones who told you you were fired?
They did. Yeah. Well, they told me I was put on leave. Actually, they didn't really know what status I was in. They're like, we're not sure. We're trying to find out. But basically, you got to get out of here. And so I spent the next five days messaging people in the department to say, please send Air Force OSI to talk to me.
And over on Easter Sunday, I got, you know, somebody called me and said, hey, a friend of mine called, said Air Force OSI will reach out to you. I've been bugging people like literally every two hours. They called, they came into my house on Monday. They made me sign an NDA, which I think is a little strange, but so I'm not going to talk about the details of their investigation.
I did talk to the agent. He told me that I could defend myself if accused and kind of talk about the generality. So I'll tell you this now. What they told me is that they were not involved. The actual people doing investigations were not involved with any of what they termed the HR actions of the previous week.
So they've been investigating leaks and they have leads, in my opinion, having talked to them. But they were not involved in the three of us being put on leave or fired. It wasn't their decision. No, it wasn't their decision. They weren't even looking at us. They got told after that, like, hey, go.
And my one question to them was, I was told by people I know in the White House that the secretary said that he had evidence. And I wanted to know, like, what is that evidence? And they said, we have not been handed any evidence to start. Now, they didn't read me my rights. It was a super informal conversation. I offered them to take a polygraph. I offered them to take my phone.
I told them I did not leak anything. I did not leak anything classified or unclassified to the media. I've not had a single conversation with the media that wasn't on the record sanctioned by public affairs since I started at the department.
No texting, no emailing, no communications at all.
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