Her activities have included coordinating her husband’s media appearances and meeting with job candidates, say people familiar with the arrangement.

Hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon on his first full day in office, his wife, Jennifer, made a request. Would the defense secretary’s staff, she asked, edit and post a video to the Defense Department’s social media accounts of his initial remarks to reporters?

The ask felt to some like a directive, according to people familiar with the matter and messages reviewed by The Washington Post. Though defense officials were aware of Jennifer Hegseth’s quiet yet omnipresent role in her husband’s bruising Senate confirmation process and her background — like his — at Fox News, she had no experience working in government and — importantly, these people said — had not been appointed to any official role in the Trump administration.

“We would always hear that she was saying what kind of videos he should be doing, and what kind of statements he should be doing, and how the press should be handled,” recalled one person, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a dynamic viewed inside the Pentagon as unorthodox and sometimes problematic.

The role of Jennifer Hegseth, 40, throughout her husband’s budding tenure in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet has snapped into focus in recent weeks, after damaging news reports about Pete Hegseth’s stumbles as his on-the-job training plays out in public view — including the revelation that she was among a group of people with whom he shared advance notice of a U.S. military operation in Yemen. Others in the unclassified group chat, created by the defense secretary using the commercially available Signal app, included his brother and personal lawyer.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke to reporters at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 21. (Video: The Washington Post)

It’s one of at least two such group chats established by her husband that Jennifer Hegseth has been included in along with other political appointees at the Pentagon, said two people familiar with the matter. The other group chat includes Sean Parnell, a senior adviser and spokesman, and Tami Radabaugh, a former Fox News producer overseeing how Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon engage with the media, these people said. It was not immediately clear whether that group chat, which has not been previously reported, also has included highly sensitive information.

Jennifer Hegseth on multiple occasions has informed her husband’s staff of media interviews he planned to do, underscoring a belief among some officials that she wields outsize influence over certain Pentagon operations. Typically, such responsibilities fall to dedicated media-engagement professionals employed by the Defense Department, not the secretary’s wife.

She met with potential political appointees as the Trump administration scrutinized people for positions at the Pentagon, two people familiar with the issue said. The role effectively had her conducting job interviews, they said.

More recently, people familiar with the matter said, Jennifer Hegseth has advocated on behalf of Marine Corps Col. Ricky Buria, a military aide who abruptly submitted retirement paperwork with plans to become a political appointee and adviser to her husband.

Jennifer Hegseth did not respond to requests for comment.

The Trump administration has criticized scrutiny of Jennifer Hegseth’s unofficial activities, saying it distracts from her husband’s “historic accomplishments.”

Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement that, “Secretary Hegseth has delivered more victories to the DoD in 100 days than most Secretaries have in four years. We are focused on RESULTS.”

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released an extensive list of “milestones” for which Hegseth’s team takes credit, including a surge of U.S. troops to the southern border and coinciding drop in illegal crossings, a crackdown on diversity efforts within the Defense Department, the awarding of a contract for the forthcoming F-47 fighter jet and the administration’s intensified military campaign targeting Iran-backed militants in Yemen.

Wilson did not respond to a request asking for the Pentagon to weigh in on the specifics of this report.

Jennifer Hegseth, third from left, and Phil Hegseth, fifth from left, listen as Pete Hegseth meets with lawmakers in January. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Revelations that Jennifer Hegseth was among those who received advance notice of the Yemen attack plans surfaced this month, following a stunning report in March by the Atlantic magazine that exposed Trump officials’ reliance on unclassified group chats to coordinate such highly sensitive matters.

Pete Hegseth, the Atlantic reported, divulged when U.S. military strikes would occur, what types of aircraft and weapons would be employed — and critically, the specific times U.S. service members would be in harm’s way. The magazine’s editor was accidentally added to the chat by Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz.

While the defense secretary, a former officer in the Army National Guard, has insisted that none of the details he shared in either group chat were classified, numerous former defense officials have assessed that some almost certainly would have been. He has not publicly addressed why he believed his wife would need to know that information.

Jennifer Hegseth has appeared with her husband at some meetings with counterparts from nations that are U.S. allies and partners, including talks at the Pentagon with British officials and a gathering in Brussels of nations supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. In response to that development, reported by the Wall Street Journal in March, defense officials have said she did not remain in the room while sensitive discussions occurred, but her presence puzzled attendees nonetheless, people familiar with the matter said.

Democrats and at least one Republican lawmaker have called for Pete Hegseth’s resignation, raising questions in Washington and beyond about how long Trump can stand by him after spending significant political capital to secure his confirmation only a few months ago. Trump, appearing to acknowledge the defense secretary’s struggles, offered him qualified support in an interview published by the Atlantic on Monday, saying “I think he’s gonna get it together” but not committing to his future in the Cabinet.

Trump has not publicly commented on Jennifer Hegseth’s activities or the extent to which her husband has involved her in his official duties.

Her involvement at the Pentagon is particularly sensitive given the scrutiny her husband faced during his confirmation process. Arm in arm, they attended meetings with senators, some of whom were disturbed by the disclosure that Pete Hegseth had paid a $50,000 settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.

The alleged assault occurred weeks after his second wife had filed for divorce, and after he had impregnated Jennifer Hegseth. Pete Hegseth, who has described struggling with alcohol in the past, said he drank too much that evening and the encounter was consensual. He and Jennifer married in 2019 in a ceremony held at one of Trump’s palatial golf clubs in New Jersey.

Large photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer, adorn a wall in his Pentagon office. (Senior Airman Spencer Perkins/Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs)

Two people familiar with their history as a couple said they were struck by the appearance of numerous jumbo photographs of his wife and family in his office. Though it’s common, one person said, for a defense secretary to display some photos of loved ones, Hegseth’s exhibit is atypical. A second person said that the display of photos seemed especially striking considering Hegseth’s often-stated focus on war fighting and “lethality.”

Publicly, Pete Hegseth has been unequivocal about how important his wife is to him. In an interview with the conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly last year, he said “his two J’s” — Jesus and Jennifer — changed his life, and that today he is a much different person than he was during his hard drinking days years ago.

“Without those two J’s,” Hegseth said then, “I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”