The Department of Defense’s internal watchdog announced Thursday it is looking into the Trump administration’s Signal group chat about upcoming strikes on the Houthis last month that accidentally included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General wrote a memo to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg notifying them of a newly launched “evaluation” into the reported “use of a commercial messaging application for official business.”
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business. Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” the memo reads.
The Pentagon declined to comment and referred NR to the inspector general. The inspector general’s office did not have any further comment.
The inspector general launched the probe after receiving a request from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D., R.I.) to conduct an inquiry and assess whether the chat featured classified information. The letter followed Wicker’s promise to investigate the chat leak after many Republican lawmakers dismissed its significance.
Hegseth was one of the senior administration officials involved in the Signal group chat and shared detailed information about the pending Houthi strikes through the encrypted messaging app, as shown in the messages Goldberg released. Hegseth has denied sharing any classified information and criticized Goldberg’s track record of publishing negative stories about Trump that involved parties have disputed.
“No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information,” Hegseth said on X in March.
“Those are some really sh***y war plans,” he added, in reference to Goldberg’s initial characterization of the group chat discussions.
The Signal chat appears to include the exact times the strikes on the Houthis would be launched. The strikes on the Houthis were carried out as planned in order to limit the Iran-backed terrorist group’s ability to disrupt international shipping routes.
Goldberg revealed in late March that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally put him in the Signal group chat in the days leading up to the strike. The White House quickly confirmed the text chat’s authenticity while dismissing his credibility otherwise.
The Signal chat included Waltz, Hegseth, and other top Trump administration officials such as Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
President Donald Trump has publicly defended Waltz and indicated he will not fire him despite the Signal chat mishap. Waltz has insisted that he never talked to Goldberg and does not know his number ended up in his phone.
“It’s pretty simple, to be honest. It’s not — it’s just something that can happen. It can happen. You can even prepare for it. It can happen. Sometimes people are hooked in, and you don’t know they’re hooked in, they’re hooked into your line, and they don’t even mean bad by it,” Trump said to NR’s Audrey Fahlberg last week.
Ratcliffe subsequently testified before Senate and House lawmakers and defended his Signal usage as being consistent with government policy, and said he did not share classified information in the text thread. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard similarly testified that no classified information was in the chat, but deferred to Hegseth and the National Security Council on specifics. The National Security Council is also investigating the Signal chat leak.
After realizing the group chat was real, Goldberg removed himself and reported on the details, without disclosing all of the messages because of they held important national security information. Goldberg released the sensitive messages in a follow-up story after President Trump and his administration questioned his credibility.