GOP airs concerns — but treads lightly — over war plans Signal chat: 'It's just wrong'
Congressional Republicans on Monday aired concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of classified material after a report showed top officials used an unauthorized messaging platform to discuss planned attacks against Houthi rebels in Yemen, calling the episode “embarrassing” and “inconceivable.”
But even as some called for investigations into the incident, leaders stopped short of demanding any action to be taken against the officials involved.
Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported Monday that national security adviser Mike Waltz had seemingly inadvertently added him to a Signal group that that included several other top-level national security officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The officials proceeded to lay out detailed war plans to attack the rebels ahead of the March 15 military operation.
“We’re very concerned about and we’ll be looking into it on a bipartisan basis,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said, adding that the panel “definitely” plans to investigate the situation.
“It’s definitely a concern,” Wicker added. “It appears that mistakes were made.”
A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council confirmed the veracity of the discussions to Goldberg, who was on the thread alongside Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Hegseth, who laid out the war plans in detail hours before the mission was completed.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he expects lawmakers to “run it to ground” and determine what exactly happened.
What alarmed lawmakers more than anything was the officials’ use of Signal, an encrypted messaging application commonly used by them to discuss sensitive topics, instead of secure government communications channels.
Senate and House members with requisite clearances are able to view classified information in their respective sensitive compartmented information facilities located in the basement of the Capitol, but Signal is known as a no-go zone for them.
“No, I do not share classified information on Signal,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a Senate Intelligence Committee member. “I do use Signal on sensitive issues but I do not use it [for classified information].”
“It’s pretty straightforward,” he added.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), also on the Intelligence panel, added that the action was “inconceivable” to her.
And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a senior member of the Intelligence Committee, told reporters at the Capitol on Monday the inclusion of a journalist in the chat was “a huge screwup.”
“I mean, is there any other way to describe it?” he said.
Concerns — and frustrations — were also apparent across the Capitol, where military-aligned House Republicans slammed the administration’s conduct. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who specialized in intelligence during his time as a brigadier general in the Air Force, called the episode “embarrassing” and “wrong.”
“That’s embarrassing, one. Two, I mean, everybody makes mistakes, texting somebody, we’ve all done it. But you don't put classified information on unclassified devices like Signal,” Bacon told reporters. “And there's no doubt, I'm an intelligence guy, Russia and China are monitoring both their phones, right. So putting out classified information like that endangers our forces, and I can't believe that they were knowingly putting that kind of classified information on unclassified systems, it’s just wrong.”
“There’s no excuse,” he added.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.), an Army veteran, said he was “absolutely” concerned that Signal was being used to discuss classified information. He would not, however, go as far as to back a “special investigation” into the matter, arguing that the issue “wasn’t a systemic thing.”
While a handful of House Republicans criticized the administration’s conduct, some refused to comment, telling reporters that they had not yet read the story that had published just after noon on Monday.
“I hadn’t read it yet,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
The next question looming over the bombshell story is what, if any, repercussions the officials involved could face.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz,” and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters the matter was “about systems and process, not personnel,” adding “it’d be a terrible mistake for there to be adverse consequences on any of the people that were involved in that call.”
Multiple Republicans sounded a similar line, indicating they were not ready to back discipline or consequences for those involved.
“I think it’s a 24-hour news cycle,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “I don’t see [how this affects Waltz]. I think that this goes down to protocol and it may just be that Mike just moved a little bit too quickly. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Mike. This doesn’t undermine my belief that he’s a solid pick for the role.”
Some Democrats, however, are suggesting that someone should be let go for the incident.
“All I can tell you is that a colonel or a flag officer who had done this would be cashiered in a New York minute,” Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said when asked if there should be disciplinary action for what occurred.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that if senior defense officials did indeed discuss military planning on an unsecure app, it “represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
For some Republicans, though, the decision needs to come from Trump.
“Somebody made a mistake. What can you say? … That’s up to the boss. I’ve got no dog in that fight,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said. “When I was a head football coach, the buck stops with you. You’ve got to make that decision.”
He was, however, baffled by The Atlantic story.
“Who’s ever heard of that before?” he added.
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