1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

Dear Members of Congress, The Financial Times has reported, citing three people familiar with the matter, that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February 2026 about making a multimillion-dollar investment in a Defense Industrials ETF — a fund holding stocks in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and Boeing — in the weeks immediately before the United States launched military strikes on Iran on February 28. The inquiry on behalf of Hegseth was flagged internally at BlackRock. The investment did not proceed only because the fund was not yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to purchase at the time. Let that sink in. The man overseeing America’s war with Iran — who President Trump himself identified as the FIRST adviser to advocate for attacking Iran, and who Trump says was “quite disappointed” when the President suggested the war might end soon — had a broker attempting to invest millions in the very defense companies that profit from that war. A former anti-corruption coordinator at the U.S. State Department has already said this is exactly the kind of conduct that would have been considered a serious ethical violation in any previous administration. The Pentagon has denied the story. But the Financial Times stands by its reporting. And Congress has the constitutional obligation to find out the truth. This is not a partisan question. This is the question of whether the Secretary of Defense used advance knowledge of a military operation — in which American troops are dying — to attempt to personally profit. If true, it would constitute one of the most serious ethical and potentially criminal violations in the history of the Defense Department. We demand that Congress immediately open an investigation into Secretary Hegseth’s financial activities in the weeks preceding the Iran strikes. Subpoena his brokerage records. Compel testimony from Morgan Stanley and BlackRock. The American people — and the troops putting their lives on the line — deserve the truth. Respectfully — and with fury.