President Donald Trump tentatively blamed national security adviser Mike Waltz for the Signal leak scandal – while continuing to vigorously defend Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth – during a Wednesday evening executive order signing.

“Mike Waltz, I guess he said, he claimed responsibility,” Trump said.

“I would imagine it had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess I don’t know. I always thought it was Mike.”

On the other hand, Trump questioned why Hegseth was receiving any scrutiny – despite the defense secretary sharing sensitive details about the operation, including launch times.

“How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do — look, look, it’s all a witch hunt,” Trump said.

Trump said Tuesday that he wasn’t planning on firing Waltz and defended him in a television interview, saying his national security adviser “learned a lesson and he’s a good man.”

The Signal issue has dogged the administration for three days. It started after the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published his account of being inadvertently added to a Signal group chat, apparently by Waltz. Others in the chat included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and other top officials.

Earlier Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump had seen the entire Signal group chat messages that The Atlantic released. She refused to label the information classified, instead referring to it as “a sensitive policy discussion.”

Some current and former military and government officials have expressed concern about the contents of Hegseth’s messages saying he leaked sensitive attack details that were “reckless and dangerous.’”