On July 23, 2026, the Navy placed Brandon Newsom, a senior official in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, on immediate administrative leave after the right-wing activist James O'Keefe released hidden-camera footage of him criticizing President Trump. Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao confirmed the action, saying the department takes such conduct “extremely seriously” and that Newsom's statements were “inappropriate and incompatible with the standards expected of Department personnel.” The Pentagon confirmed the suspension.
SOURCING NOTE: The recording is an O'Keefe hidden-camera product, made without Newsom's knowledge during what O'Keefe described as a private date. Newsweek reported it had not independently verified the footage, and O'Keefe has a long, documented history of releasing selectively edited video. What is independently confirmed here is the personnel action, not the full accuracy or context of the clips. In the footage as released, Newsom is shown calling Trump “a textbook narcissist,” calling the Iran war “completely stupid” and “driven by one man's ego,” and saying he wanted to “stay and stick it out” at the Pentagon so that “when the time comes, I can undo whatever's been done.”
The entry is included as a data point in the administration's pattern of punishing officials for perceived disloyalty, but it is a genuinely mixed case, and worth stating both sides plainly. On one hand, an administration placing a civil servant on leave for privately criticizing the president raises a speech-and-retaliation concern, and the fact that the trigger was an activist's secret recording of a private date makes the episode more troubling, not less. On the other hand, Newsom's own recorded statement that he intended to use his position to “undo” the elected administration's lawful policies is itself a norms problem, and would give any administration grounds for a personnel review. The reason this is filed as “concerning” rather than a clean abuse is that the underlying footage is unverified and the conduct cuts in more than one direction.