Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied he mishandled classified information and insisted “nobody was texting war plans” in a Signal chat between top Trump administration officials made public Monday by a journalist who was mistakenly added to the discussion.
Hegseth sought to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, after his explosive story detailed how he was added to texts in a commercial app where Hegseth laid out the targets of airstrikes on Yemen-based Houthi fighters.
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes,” an uncharacteristically angry Hegseth said about Goldberg, a well-regarded Washington reporter and editor. “This is a guy who peddles in garbage.”
The secretary — who spoke as he landed in Hawaii on the start of a weeklong trip to Asia — didn’t deny the existence of the chat, which could have violated a federal law that deals with the handling of sensitive information. The group discussing the top-secret strikes included Vice President JD Vance, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes appeared to contradict Hegseth’s comments on Monday night by confirming the existence of the group and offering no denials as to its content.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” he said.
The chat, set up by Waltz in the days prior to this month’s bombing campaign against the Iran-backed group, laid out the Trump administration’s thinking on whether to bomb the Houthis, who have targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The information Hegseth shared with the group likely included classified information, raising the stakes of the situation. White House officials were questioning Waltz’s future role in the administration on Monday night, according to a POLITICO report.
Defense officials were aghast at the revelations and Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell did not respond to requests for comment.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the “story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
