By Brendan Scanland
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WZMQ 19 News) — In some cases, it’s good when plans make it out of the group chat. However, that is most definitely not the case when it comes to a group chat with top national security officials containing highly sensitive information.
Damage control was on display Tuesday following a leak of sensitive information related to U.S. military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen earlier this month. Republicans are largely defending the Trump administration as it downplays the “inadvertent” leak. Democrats are taking aim at the White House and top administration officials.
“They’ve acknowledged that there was an error and they’re correcting it,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R- LA) on Tuesday. “It’s a mistake, but we’ve got to correct it going forward and they will.”
On Monday, news broke that the editor-in-chief from The Atlantic was accidentally added to a group chat with top members of President Trump’s cabinet on the nongovernment encrypted chat app, Signal.
According to the Atlantic article detailing the group chat, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz created the conversation with top officials including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth reportedly sent “operational details” of forthcoming strikes on Yemen.
“This kind of carelessness is how people get killed. It’s how our enemies can take advantage of us. It’s how our national security falls into danger,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D- NY).
Democrats blasted the administration Tuesday. Some are demanding Waltz and Hegseth testify before Congress, others are going even further.
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should resign,” said Ted Lieu (D- CA), Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “He recklessly texted operational details of military strikes, including time, place, location and sequencing of those strikes to a journalist. Had that information gotten to the Houthis, American pilots could have been shot down. Navy sailors could have been targeted.”
In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, Democrats pressed Trump’s top national security officials, including Tulsi Gabbard.
“You were not TG on this group chat,” asked Sen. Mark Warner (D- VA).
“I’m not going to get into the specifics,” replied Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence.
“So you refuse to acknowledge whether you were on this group chat,” Warner asked.
“Senator, I’m not going to get into the specifics,” Gabbard repeated.
The White House stressed Tuesday that no classified information was shared in the chat.
“No ‘war plans’ were discussed. No classified material was sent to the thread,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X. “The Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump,” she added.
Senators Gary Peters (D- MI) and Elissa Slotkin (D- MI) shared their reaction to the leak on social media.
“This is a flagrant failure and a huge breach of national security. Our servicemembers deserve more from those in command. Carelessness of this level is simply unacceptable,” said Peters on X.
“I’ve worked at the White House for both Democrat and Republican Presidents and I’ve never seen this kind of mishandling of classified info. It’s sloppy at best and puts the military involved in these sensitive operations at risk,” said Slotkin. “If these were regular soldiers or a civilian CIA officer like I was, they would be reprimanded, likely fired, prosecuted and possibly jailed. But this Administration believes they are above the law — and seemingly don’t care what US forces and US operations they put at risk.”
