The White House said last week it had taken steps to ensure the inadvertent addition of a journalist to a group chat to discuss sensitive information about a pending airstrike in Yemen can “never happen again.”
But Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, noted lawmakers’ plans to probe the matter are not over after asking for an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Defense.
“I think that’s very hopeful messaging,” he said when asked by The Hill about the White House’s comments. “And maybe it is – but we’ll wait and see what the inspector general for the DOD says.”
“It’s already ongoing. We already requested it – the committee did on a bipartisan basis – and we’ll look at it on a bipartisan basis.”
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) was among those on the Senate Intelligence Committee who told national security leaders gathered recently for the annual worldwide threats hearing that he had additional questions on the matter.
“All concerns haven’t been addressed. So there will be more to be learned going forward,” he told The Hill.
To be sure, many Republicans were uninterested in addressing the topic at all. Even as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe appeared before lawmakers in the two days after the news broke, many did not raise the issue during their time for questions.
But bipartisan efforts to review the matter in the Senate will continue while House Democrats have likewise pushed for outside review elsewhere across government.
It’s not clear what steps the White House has taken, even as they seek to move past the controversy.
“This case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last Monday.
“There have been steps taken to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again moving forward, and the president and Mike Waltz and his entire national security team have been working together very well, if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team,” Leavitt added, referencing President Trump’s national security adviser.
The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch has more here.
