Two of the Trump administration’s top intelligence officials have denied that classified information was shared in an encrypted group chat, which were being discussed when editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic had been mistakenly added to the conversation.
During a previously-scheduled oversight hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee with FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in attendance, Democrats grilled Gabbard and Ratcliffe about the security break, in which The Atlantic’s Goldberg was accidentally included in an 18-member group chat on the commercially available Signal app about U.S. military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Gabbard and Ratcliffe were in the group chat, per Goldberg. Patel declined to say if the FBI had begun an investigation.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe asserted there was no classified information included in the message chain, with Ratcliffe also stating he believed national security adviser Waltz intended the chat to be “a mechanism for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a substitute for using high side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.”
The White House also continued to downplay the security breach, as Democrats called for the resignation of the national security adviser, Michael Waltz (who set up the group chat) and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who reportedly shared classified war plans in it. President Trump defended Waltz, saying in an interview with NBC News that the national security adviser had “learned a lesson, and is a good man” and suggested a staff member was to blame for including a journalist in the secret group chat.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday no classified material was sent to the group chat, and that that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed.” Leavitt said: “The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible.”
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the panel, slammed the incident as “sloppy” and said others would have been fired for the same conduct, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called for an investigation, saying in a statement that the use of a non-classified text app “is completely outrageous and shocks the conscience. If House Republicans are truly serious about keeping America safe, and not simply being sycophants and enablers, they must join Democrats in a swift, serious and substantive investigation into this unacceptable and irresponsible national security breach.”
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