Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the Trump administration for using a Signal chat to discuss plans for carrying out bombing in Yemen, calling on officials to resign while saying others would have been fired for the same actions.
Warner said national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not “conduct hygiene 101” in failing to realize there was a journalist on the group chat after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added.
“There’s plenty of declassified information that shows that our adversaries, China and Russia, are trying to break into encrypted systems,” Warner said of the messaging app Signal during his opening remarks of the Senate panel’s annual worldwide threats hearing.
“If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired,” he added.
“This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error.”
Warner noted that “classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system.”
On the social platform X, as he began his opening remarks, Warner called on the two Trump officials to resign.
“When the stakes are this high, incompetence is not an option. Pete Hegseth should resign. Mike Waltz should resign,” he wrote.
President Trump described the episode as a glitch in the morning while attacking The Atlantic and its Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who apparently was invited to the chat by a staffer working for the president’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz.
Yet, while Trump defended his team and signaled there would be no punishment, he also made it clear he saw the episode as a mistake that should not be repeated.
“It’s just something that can happen, it can happen,” Trump told reporters late on Tuesday. “You can even prepare for it; it can happen. Sometimes people are hooked in and you don’t know they’re hooked in. … It’s not a perfect technology, there is no perfect technology.”
He said Waltz should not apologize but that in the future, a meeting like the one to discuss a military strike on the Houthis that included Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and many others should be held in person.
“No, I don’t think he should apologize. I think he’s doing his best. It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect and probably he won’t be using it again,” Trump said, to which Waltz responded, “Yes, sir.”
However, Waltz added that he felt that “the Signal fiasco is not a one-off. It is unfortunately a pattern we’re seeing too often repeated,” he said, adding the “erosion of trust” among the intelligence workforce and allies across the globe “can’t be put back in the bottle overnight.”
“Make no mistake: These actions make America less safe,” he added
