Top Senators on the Armed Services Committee are requesting the Department of Defense conduct an inquiry into the Signal group chat where high-ranking Trump administration officials discussed strikes on the Houthis in the presence of a journalist.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D., R.I.) wrote a letter to the Pentagon’s acting inspector general to ascertain the facts of the Signal chat and assess whether classified information was transmitted through the encrypted messaging app.
“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen. If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know,” the Senators wrote.
Wicker and Reed sent the inspector general’s office a list of information they want the watchdog to assess and brief them about immediately upon completion of the review. The letter comes after Wicker vowed to investigate the situation, even as many Republicans downplay it.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz created the Signal chat earlier this month and inadvertently added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the group conversation, Goldberg revealed Monday. Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and other senior administration officials were in the Signal thread.
Goldberg initially did not report some of the chat’s messages in order to protect national security because of the detailed strike plans Hegseth sent to the rest of the group. After Trump and several high ranking administration officials questioned Goldberg’s credibility and said no classified information was sent in the chat, Goldberg released the rest of the text messages in a follow up story.
The Trump administration responded by accusing Goldberg of exaggerating the magnitude of the information Hegseth transmitted over Signal, and Hegseth dismissed Goldberg’s assertion that he put war plans into the chat.
“No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information,” Hegseth said on X Wednesday.
The chat did, however, include the exact times that strikes would be launched.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified before Senate and House committees earlier this week that no classified information was sent over the chat. Ratcliffe said the same thing about his own communications, and said his usage of Signal was within the bounds of the intelligence community’s policy. Both deferred to Hegseth on whether his specific texts violated Pentagon policy surrounding the disclosure of classified information.
The text messages appear to show Hegseth informing colleagues about the timing, sequence, and assets to be used in the upcoming strikes. Waltz created the chat to coordinate discussions on government systems about the Houthi strikes, but it turned into a place where senior officials debated Trump’s strategy and talked about the strikes as they happened.
Amid an avalanche of scrutiny, Waltz has insisted that he has never talked to Goldberg and does not know how Goldberg’s number ended up in his phone. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump dismissed the possibility of firing Waltz or anybody else involved with the Signal incident.
“We pretty much looked into it,” Trump said in response to a question from NR’s Audrey Fahlberg.
“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.”