The administration of United States President Donald Trump has continued to face fallout from an article in The Atlantic that revealed editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a group chat where top-level government officials discussed plans for bombing Yemen, Al Jazeera reported.
The White House remained in damage control mode on Tuesday, seeking to dismiss allegations that government secrets were at risk, according to Al Jazeera.
“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” Trump said at a meeting of US ambassadors, waving the scandal aside.
“ We’ve pretty much looked into it. It’s pretty simple, to be honest. It’s just something that can happen.”
He told reporters he had no intention of seeking punishments, barring the use of the social media app Signal or asking for an apology from those involved.
Trump’s comments come in response to Goldberg’s article, published a day prior, wherein the editor explains how he received an invitation on the messaging platform Signal from a user identified as White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, reported Al Jazeera.
IS suicide attack in Yemen kills 45 government fighters
Goldberg accepted the invitation. He quickly found himself in the midst of a conversation about the merits of bombing Houthi fighters in Yemen.
While Goldberg declined to quote specific military information from the chat, he did share in his published article interactions between officials at the highest level of government, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Al Jazeera added.
Vance, Hegseth and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, for instance, were quoted as debating the timing of the attacks and whether economic gain could be “extracted” from Europe in exchange for the bombings.
The vice president, in particular, expressed concern that the bombings would do more to benefit European trade in the Red Sea, where the Houthis are known to strike naval and shipping vessels.
The article created a splash in Washington, DC, almost as soon as it was published. Questions were raised about why sensitive information was discussed on a non-government platform and whether the text messages would be preserved, as required by federal records laws, said the Doha-based media outlet.
Some of those questions were put directly to two of the participants in the Signal chat, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Al Jazeera added.
Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday, facing a grilling from Democrats.
“ This was not only sloppy. It not only violated all procedures, but if this information had gotten out, American lives could have been lost. If the Houthis had this information, they could reposition their defensive systems,” said Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, according to Al Jazeera
“ It’s also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check Security Hygiene 101.”
Senator Ron Wyden, another Democrat at the hearing, called the Signal chat “ obviously reckless, obviously dangerous”.
“Both the mishandling of classified information and the deliberate destruction of federal records are potential crimes that ought to be investigated immediately,” Wyden said. “And I want to make clear that I’m of the view that there ought to be resignation, starting with the national security advisor and the secretary of defence.”
The position of the White House, however, has been that no classified information was released over the Signal chat.
In his article, Goldberg is clear that top-secret information was included in the group chat’s messages.
“The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel,” Goldberg wrote.
Had Goldberg repeated that information in his publication, he could have opened himself up to legal repercussions. Instead, Goldberg offered a broad-strokes description of what transpired in the chat, Al Jazeera reported.
“What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” he wrote.