President of the United States President Donald Trump continues to face fallout from an Atlantic article that revealed Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg has been added to the group chat.
The White House remained in damage control mode on Tuesday, attempting to dismiss allegations that government secrets were at risk.
“As I understand, there was no classification information,” Trump said at a meeting of the US ambassadors that he sidelined the scandal.
“We’ve mostly considered it. It’s very simple, to be honest. It’s just something that can happen.”
He told reporters he would not seek punishment except for using signals on social media apps or asking those involved to apologise.
Trump’s comments come in response to a Goldberg article published a day ago. The editor explains how he received an invitation to the messaging platform signal from a user identified as White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
Goldberg accepted the invitation. He soon finds himself in the middle of a conversation about the merits of bombing Yemeni Hooti fighter jets.
Goldberg refused to cite certain military information from the chat, but he shared an interaction of published articles of the highest level officials in the government, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses.
For example, Vance, Hegseth and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller were quoted as discussing the timing of the attack and whether economic benefits could be “extracted” from Europe in exchange for bombing.
In particular, the Vice President expressed concern that the bombing is doing more to benefit European trade in the Red Sea.
This article created a splash in Washington, DC as soon as it was published. Questions have been raised about why sensitive information was discussed on non-government platforms and whether text messages will be saved as required by federal government records laws.
Some of these questions were directly entered into two participants in Signal Chat, Director of CIA John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
Ratcliffe and Gabbard testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday that they faced Democrat Grill.
“Not only was this sloppy, it was not only violated all the procedures, but if this information came out, it could have lost America’s life. If Houthis had this information, they could have relocated their defense system.”
“Also, having all these advanced players on this line was just daunting for me, and didn’t even bother checking out Security Hygiene 101.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, another Democrat at the hearing, called the signal chat, “It’s clearly reckless and obviously dangerous.”
“Both errors in classified information and intentional destruction of federal records are potential crimes that should be investigated immediately,” Wyden said. “And I want to make it clear that I see a resignation, starting with the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Defense.”
Categorized information questions
However, the White House location was that the information classified via signal chat was not made public.
His article reveals that Goldberg has the best information in his group chat messages.
“The information they contain could have been used to injure American military and intelligence personnel if they had been read by US enemies,” Goldberg wrote.
If Goldberg had repeated that information in his publications, he could have had legal implications. Instead, Goldberg provided an extensive stroke explanation of what happened in the chat.
“What I say is, to explain the shocking recklessness of this signal conversation, Hegus’s post included operational details of upcoming strikes in Yemen, including information about the target, weapons deployed by the US, and attack sequences,” he writes.
However, on Tuesday, the Trump administration disputed the assessment, saying no secrets were revealed in signal chats.
“Jeffrey Goldberg is famous for his sensational spin,” White House spokesman Caroline Leavitt wrote on social media. “The facts about his latest story are: 1. The “war plan” was not discussed. 2. No documents classified as threads have been sent. ”
Ratcliffe and Gabbard repeatedly made similar statements at the Capitol Hill hearing, denying sharing the best information about the signal, whether it was their chat or anything else.
“To be clear, I am not involved in signal group messaging that is in any way related to the classified information,” Ratcliffe said.
“I have the same answer,” Gabbard repeated. Unlike Ratcliffe, Gabbard refused to even admit that she was a participant in the chat, as reported in a Goldberg article.
Their position led to a fierce conflict with Senator Warner. Senator Warner argued that if the information that was classified in the chat does not contain, it should be released immediately for review.
“Why are you not going to go into the details? Is it all sorted?” Warner asked.
“This is currently under review by national security –” Gabbard began to respond as Warner inserted.
Meanwhile, at a meeting with the US ambassador, Trump denied that there was a national security violation.
“Our national security is stronger than ever,” Trump told reporters. Instead, he specifically denounced the technology and signalling apps to allow Goldberg to access private chats.
“It’s not perfect technology. There’s no perfect technology. Something really good is very cumbersome and very difficult to access,” he said.
Trump governs rivalry with the Atlantic
The scandal over sensitive information on Signal Chat has also allowed Trump to update his broadside against the Atlantic magazine, where Goldberg works.
Trump has criticised magazines in the past, particularly after releasing a 2020 report claiming that Republican leaders denounced fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump himself is not a military veteran, but he has publicly questioned the service of soldiers like the late Senator John McCain.
Goldberg also wrote that article. Trump denied the allegations at the time, calling the article “disgrace.”
Republican leaders have long let go of mainstream media outlets, suggesting that reporting may be illegal.
When he addressed the scandal at Tuesday’s meeting, Trump once again picked out Goldberg for his report.
“I just happen to know that the guy is a complete three-bag,” Trump said. “Atlantic is a magazine that failed. It’s very, very poor. No one cares about it. This gives a little shot. And I’ll tell you this: they’ve made up more stories. And they’re just a magazine that failed.
Trump then turned to the waltz. Waltz also sat in the meeting, defending the advisor’s apparent mistake of inviting Goldberg to a signal chat.
“He’s a very good guy. That guy is a very good guy you criticize,” Trump gestured to the waltz. “He’s a very good guy and he’s going to keep doing a good job.”
Waltz, a former US representative for Florida, cried out to point his fingers at the Atlantic and its editors.
“I think there are a lot of lessons. There are a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves about this president,” Waltz said.
“This is especially true, I’ve never met him. I don’t know. I’ve never communicated with him, and we’re looking at him and reviewing how he turned out to be in this room.”
However, Democrats praised Goldberg’s restraint for not revealing national security secrets and for voluntarily removing himself from signal chats.
“No matter how much the Secretary of Defense and others want to dip him, I think this journalist at least had an ethic that he doesn’t report,” Sen. Warner told the intelligence newsletter hearing.
Trump doubles in “free road” Europe
But what Goldberg quoted verbatim was a message debating whether the Lord’s officials would delay their attacks on Yemen, whether Europe would benefit most from the bombing.
An account that appears to belong to Vice President Vance, for example, posted a comment highlighting the extent to which European trade runs through the Red Sea and surrounding waterways.
“Three percent of US trade is carried out through Suez. 40% of European trade is. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” writes Vance.
“I don’t know if the President knows how inconsistent this is with his message in Europe right now.”
Vance appeared to support the bombing by postponing a month, but he ultimately retracted his objection, not without further swipes in Europe.
“If you think you should do that, I hate bailing out Europe again,” Vance apparently wrote.
In response, Defense Secretary Hegses reportedly reportedly reportedly reported, “VP: I fully share the disgust of European freeloading. That’s pathetic.”
The back room appears to confirm something that has long been speculated in public places. The US-European relations lie in the downward slide.
Trump accused Europe of using the US and points to a trade deficit that shows Americans are consuming more European goods than vice versa. On April 2, his administration is set to implement what Trump called “mutual tariffs,” consistent with import taxes imposed by other countries.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Trump was asked if he agreed to Hegus and Vance’s assessment that Europe was “freely loaded.”
“Do you really want me to answer?” Trump asked, Deadpan. “Yeah. I think they’re freeloading. The European Union was absolutely terrible for us in trade. It’s terrible.”
He then switched directions and promoted peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, as well as future tariffs. “I think it was very fair to a country that has really abused us economically for decades.”
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