Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Wednesday blamed an administration staffer for including a reporter in a group chat of Trump officials discussing war strategy. (Watch the video below.)

Only one problem: White House national security adviser Mike Waltz already issued a mea culpa, saying an underling wasn’t responsible for the security breach, as President Donald Trump had claimed. Waltz said it was his own fault.

“So this thing’s over, it was a mistake, and you think everybody’s been held accountable and owned it?” Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Hawley in the most leading way possible.

Replied the senator: “You know, listen, I thought that the national security adviser was clear about this yesterday, the president was clear about it. You know, some staffer who apparently set up the group chat ― I assume that person probably won’t be in charge of meetings anymore.”

Waltz was on the same network the day before telling host Laura Ingraham: “A staffer wasn’t responsible. I take full responsibility. I built the group and my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

Hawley continued his apparent spin to Watters:

“At the end of the day, this strike was successful. There was no classified material out there, the strike was not compromised in any way. America is safer today because of the actions that President Trump took. The libs can’t complain about that so here we are. I would say case closed.”

The mission actually could have been compromised by the Atlantic reporter mistakenly included on the Signal talk of an imminent bomb assault on Houthis in Yemen. But editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg released sensitive parts of the exchange well after the military action in response to the GOP downplaying of the incident. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had claimed no specific strategy was discussed, but the texts appeared to prove otherwise.