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Trump dismisses group chat security leak as a ’glitch’
US President Donald Trump has commented on the group chat security leak, dismissing it as a leak to NBC News.
Trump told NBC News in a phone call that it was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”, adding his national security adviser Michael Waltz had “learned a lesson”.
It is unlikely this will placate critics of the president who see this leak as a serious breach of national security.
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During an interview with The Bulwark, the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg weighed in on whether he’ll release more Signal texts after he was included in a group chat with the US vice president and other White House officials discussing upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
“My colleagues and I and the people who are giving us advice on this have some interesting conversations to have about this”, Goldberg said. “But just because they’re irresponsible with material, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be irresponsible with this material”.
Hillary Clinton reacts to military plans leak: ‘You have got to be kidding me’
Ramon Antonio Vargas
Hillary Clinton – the former US secretary of state who lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump amid a scandal over her use of a private server for classified emails – reacted to Monday’s news of a leak of highly sensitive military plans at the White House by saying: “You have got to be kidding me.”
Clinton punctuated her reaction on the X platform with an eyes emoji and a link to an Atlantic article that revealed how Trump officials inadvertently broadcast plans of US airstrikes on Houthi rebels through a Signal group chat with a journalist reading along.
Trump and his supporters criticized her ruthlessly for her classified emails and private server use before and after he defeated her in the presidential election nine years earlier, even calling for her to be imprisoned.
Among them were some of the participants in the group chat reported on by the Atlantic: the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the Central Intelligence Agency director, John Ratcliffe; and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.
“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now,” ex-Fox News host Hegseth said on his former network in 2016, as CNN showed in a montage which went viral Monday night.
That same year, Rubio remarked on Fox: “Nobody is above the law – not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.”
In 2019, Ratcliffe told Fox: “Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act.”
And in a 2023 CNN appearance, Waltz complained about the lack of prosecution over “the Clinton emails”.
Read the full story by the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas here:
Republican representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said that there’s “no doubt” that Russia and China were monitoring the US officials’ devices used for a war plan text chat.
“I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones,” Bacon said in an interview with CNN. “So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.”
Bacon has also said he would defer to the White House on whether defense secretary Pete Hegseth or national security adviser Michael Waltz should face repercussions over war plans that were texted in a group chat that included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine.
“But I think we should be critical,” he said.
“The fact that classified information was put on an unclassified system, I think the secretary of defense needs to answer for that,” Bacon added.
Democrats call for investigations and possible resignations after Signal blunder
The Senate briefing on national security threats has ended.
Democrats called for further investigations and possible resignations a day after top national security officials texted military plans to a group chat that included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine.
Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told CIA director John Ratcliffe that the leak was an “embarrassment” and asked whether it was “just a normal day at the CIA”.
Senators will reconvene in closed setting at 12.40pm ET, where lawmakers are expected to discuss the Signal leak in greater detail.
Signal president defends app's security after White House blunder
The president of Signal defended the messaging app’s security after top Trump administration officials mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom they used to discuss a looming US attack on Yemen’s Houthis, Reuters reports.
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker did not directly address the blunder, which Democratic lawmakers have said was a breach of US national security. But she described the app as the “gold standard in private comms” in a post on X, which outlined Signal’s security advantages over Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app.
“We’re open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply (end-to-end encryption) and privacy-preserving tech across our system to protect metadata and message contents,” she said.
I wouldn’t say that Will and I are battling but I do disagree. Because there are big differences between Signal and WhatsApp.
Signal is the gold standard in private comms. We’re open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply e2ee and privacy preserving tech across our system… https://t.co/ZU60z2vVHy
Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona pressed Gabbard and Ratcliffe on whether the information on the Signal chat was classified or not.
“Decisional strike deliberations should be conducted through classified channels,” Ratcliffe said, answering Kelly’s question as to whether or not launching a strike on another country counts as classified information.
Tulsi Gabbard avoids questions about Signal group chat
Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dodged questions about her involvement in the Signal group chat to which an Atlantic journalist was added.
“Senator, I don’t want to get into this,” Gabbard said when Senator Mark Warner asked if she had participated in the chat.
She has repeatedly said there was no classified information in the conversation.
Meanwhile, FBI director Kash Patel declined to say whether the bureau would investigate claims that cabinet members improperly leaked national security information in the chat.
“I was just briefed about it late last night, this morning. I don’t have an update,” said Patel.
Warner asked for an update “by the end of the day”.
Senator Angus King pressed director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on why climate change was not included as a national security threat in the report.
“We recognize environmental changes and their potential impact on operations, but our focus remains on the direct threats to people’s health, wellbeing, and security,” Gabbard said.
King rebutted by saying that climate change exacerbates mass migration, famine, displacement and political violence.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, should resign amid Monday’s leak.
Wyden called the Signal chat “obviously reckless, obviously dangerous, both the mishandling of classified information and the deliberate destruction of federal records or potential crimes that ought to be investigated immediately”.
“I’m of the view that there ought to be resignation, starting with the national security adviser and the secretary of defense, Director Radcliffe and Director Gabbard,” Wyden said.
CIA director says he was briefed he could use Signal for work and that it was used by Biden administration
Democratic senator Mark Warner grilled Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence and CIA director John Ratcliffe about the chat that discussed war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
Gabbard claims that “there was no classified material” in the Signal chat.
Ratcliffe said that, when he was confirmed as CIA director, he was briefed by agency officials about “the use of Signal as a permissible work use” and “a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration”.
Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, delivered the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, listing China’s military, Mexico’s drug trade and Russia’s nuclear weapons among some of the most alarming threats to the country’s national security.
Before FBI director Kash Patel began his remarks, a protester yelled “Stop funding Israel!”
The committee’s Republican chair, Tom Cotton, called the protester a “lunatic”.
