Democrats assailed two members of Trump’s Cabinet during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over why officials were discussing a planned military attack on a militant group in Yemen over the Signal platform, and how a journalist could have been let into the discussion.
Trump described the episode as a "glitch" Tuesday morning while attacking The Atlantic and editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who apparently was invited to the chat by a staffer working for the president’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz.
Yet while Trump defended his team and signaled there would be no punishment, he also made it clear he saw the episode as a mistake that should not be repeated.
“It’s just something that can happen, it can happen,” Trump told reporters late on Tuesday. “It’s not a perfect technology, there is no perfect technology.”
He said Waltz should not apologize, but that in the future, a meeting like the one to discuss a military strike on the Houthis that included Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others, should be held in person.
White House officials publicly downplayed the story, and while Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Hegseth and Waltz should both lose their jobs, sources close to the Trump administration said they doubted any principals would be fired.
“I think this is one of these cases of ‘don’t f‑‑‑ing do it again,’” said one source close to the White House. “I do think internally someone is going to get chewed out.”
At the global threats hearing held by the Senate Intelligence panel on Tuesday morning, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe both denied sharing any classified material through the chat, despite Goldberg reporting the discussion included detailed talks about the strike in Yemen.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe at times pointed to Hegseth, who was not at the hearing, saying some of the information on the strikes was shared by the Department of Defense and that it would have been Hegseth and his department’s call on whether it was classified. Because it was shared, both suggested they believed it was not classified.
At another point, when Gabbard said she would “defer” to the Defense Department, she was chastised by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).
“You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications,” he said.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
