'Positioned to profit': Rep. Mike Levin slams Pete Hegseth for making money moves ahead of the war

With the Iran conflict dragging on for over two months, Representative Mike Levin tried to steer attention toward U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's personal money moves, ahead of the conflict. Sharing a Financial Times report on Hegseth's broker attempting to invest in defense companies right before the war, Levin claimed the news should be on every front page. The Democratic leader alleged that Hegseth committed "profound betrayal" by designing and selling a war that he was positioned to profit from. 

According to the FT report, a broker linked to Hegseth at Morgan Stanley contacted the investment firm BlackRock in the weeks leading up to the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran, looking to make a multimillion-dollar investment. The asset manager allegedly attempted to buy the Defense Industrials Active ETF, which invests in companies that benefit from increased government spending on defense and security amid geopolitical tensions, according to BlackRock. As per the report, the transaction did not go through as the fund launched last year was not yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to purchase. 

Taking to X, Levin claimed the matter needed to be investigated even if there was a sliver of truth in it. "Pete Hegseth didn’t just help design the Iran war. He championed it publicly, cheered it on, and sold it to the American people," Levin wrote. Citing the FT report, he claimed Hegseth was positioned to profit from the war using information that no private investor could ever have, but he couldn't because the investment didn't go through, not because someone intervened. "That is a profound betrayal of every service member he commands, and of every American who trusted this Administration with their national security," Levin added. He further pointed out that no one should cash in privileged information while putting American lives and national security at risk. 

Since the FT report did not mention how much discretion the broker had to make the investment or if Hegseth had shared any input for the move, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell came out in defense of the War Secretary. In a post on X, ​Parnell claimed the story was "entirely false and fabricated" ​and demanded a retraction. "Neither Secretary Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about any ​such investment," he wrote. 

Hegseth recently came under fire for his handling of the Iran war as well, with one House Democrat vowing to introduce articles of impeachment against him. Rep. Yassamin Ansari on Monday released a statement saying she would bring the motion of impeachment next week against the War Secretary for "repeatedly violating his oath of office and his duty to the Constitution." She claimed Hegseth recklessly put U.S. service members in danger, and he committed repeated war crimes, which were grounds enough for his impeachment and removal from office. However, with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, it is unlikely that Ansari would secure a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict Hegseth for an impeachable offense.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Hegseth, alongside President Donald Trump, continued to further escalate tensions, claiming that the U.S. military will strike Iran the hardest on Monday and Tuesday if Tehran fails to comply with the demands and open the Strait of Hormuz. Trump doubled down on the threats of hitting civilian infrastructure, saying,  "The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night," Reuters reported.