President Donald Trump’s government is dealing with the consequences of an extraordinary filtration of internal deliberations in national security matters, revealed in an encrypted group chat that included a journalist from The Atlantic.
In the group conversations between Cabinet officials and senior positions of the White House, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, made known concrete operational details two hours before US soldiers launched attacks against the Hutí militia in Yemen, according to The Atlantic. Michael Waltz, national security advisor, added without realizing Jeffrey Goldberg, the chief editor of The Atlantic, to the group chat in Signal, a commercial courier application.
This is what is known.
What has the White House said?
President Trump told NBC News on Tuesday that the filtration was “the only technical problem in two months, and turned out to be serious.”
Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of the White House, published on social networks that “no war plans’ were discussed” and that “no classified material was sent to thread.” This contradicts Goldberg, who wrote that he had not published some of the thread messages because he said they contained delicate information.
The Goldberg report also raised concern about the fact that government officials used Signal, a messaging platform that is not safe, and configured the messages to be deleted automatically. Leavitt rejected those
concerns.
“The Office of the White House Legal Advisor has provided guidance on various platforms so that President Trump’s high rank officials communicate in the safest and efficient way,” he wrote.
After the report of The Atlantic, Brian Hughes, spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement on Monday that the thread of messages “seems to be authentic.” Hughes said the officials were “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
The government has tried to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg
The first time Trump was asked about the report, on Monday, he said he was not aware of the filtration, but immediately attacked the magazine.
“I’m not very fan of The Atlantic,” he said. “For me, it is a magazine that is breaking.”
For years, Trump has complained about Goldberg and his publication for an article that the journalist published in 2020 in which he said that Trump had refused to visit a cemetery of American soldiers fallen in France because he was “full of losers.”
Hegseth criticized Goldberg on Monday, by describing him as “Dizque deceptive and very discredited journalist” after landing in Hawaii, his first scale before a one -week trip to Asia.
“Nobody was sending text plans by text messages, and that is all I have to say about it,” said Hegseth.
Goldberg said “that is a lie” in CNN in response to Hegseth’s comments.
Will Waltz face the consequences?
Trump said Tuesday that Waltz would not face consequences after Goldberg wrote that the national security advisor had added it to the chat of Signal.
“Michael Waltz has learned the lesson, and is a good man,” Trump told NBC News. The president said that one of Waltz’s staff had added to Goldberg.
But even before the filtration released on Monday, Waltz faced skepticism inside and outside the government. Some of Trump’s most conservative allies considered that he was not loyal enough to the president, while some of the Republicans who served in Congress considered him too loyal.
What did Vice President JD Vance say in the chat?
In the chat of Signal, Vance expressed concern about the attack on Yemen, writing that he thought the government was “making an error.” Vance said he was concerned that the Americans were not to “understand this or why it is necessary” to launch the attacks. He pointed out that only 3 percent of US trade is carried out through the Suez Canal, a sea route threatened by the hutis, compared to 40 percent of European trade.
“I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns,” Vance wrote. He later wrote: “I simply hate to rescue Europe again.”
Vance’s comments revealed some disagreement within the high positions of the government, a notable event especially coming from Vance, who has done everything possible to present a unified front with the president. A Vance spokesman denied any discrepancy from the vice president.
“The first priority of the vice president is always to ensure that the president’s advisors adequately inform him about the foundation of his internal deliberations,” said spokesman William Martin, in a statement. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports the foreign policy of this administration. The president and the vice president have had subsequent conversations about this matter and completely agree.”
How are both parties responding?
The Democrats are furious for the report and demand that the revelation of sensitive material happened. Some are also calling attention to Trump’s efforts to subtract importance from the incident, resurfaceing Waltz clips and other Trump allies when they criticized that Hillary Clinton would use a private email server as secretary of state.
Clinton published on Monday on social networks a link to The Atlantic article with an emoji of a couple of eyes and wrote: “It has to be a joke.”
Several Republicans of the Capitol expressed concern about Goldberg’s inclusion in the conversation and recognized that it had been a mistake. However, most said they wanted them to be given a full report before drawing conclusions.
Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican for Pennsylvania, who is part of the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives, said in CNN that his group would send a request for information to the office of the National Intelligence Director and then determine if a more thorough investigation was justified. But the president of the Chamber, Mike Johnson, Republican by Louisiana, ruled out the idea that additional investigations or disciplinary measures for the officials involved were carried out.
Even so, some of Trump’s most loyal allies reduced importance to the incident. Sean Hannity, Fox News presenter, said the story was a “slander” that was being “undertaken on the left.”