US Department of Defense demands retraction of report alleging broker sought multimillion-dollar investment for Hegseth. The United States Department of Defense has demanded the retraction of a newspaper report alleging that a broker for defence chief Pete Hegseth attempted to make a large investment in weapons companies in the run-up to the war on Iran. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell demanded the "immediate" retraction on Monday after The Financial Times reported that a wealth manager for the defence secretary contacted BlackRock about making a multimillion-dollar investment in a defence-related fund in the weeks leading up to the war. Hegseth's broker at Morgan Stanley ultimately did not go ahead with the investment in the exchange-traded fund, whose holdings include Lockheed Martin and