Republican senators are calling for the Trump administration and congressional committees to investigate the disclosure of sensitive national security information over Signal, a commercial app, fearing the controversy could have major political consequences.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said Tuesday that his committee will investigate the matter but also called on the Defense Department’s inspector general to launch a probe.
“We’ll certainly be asking the IG to look into it,” Wicker told The Hill of the incident, which has sparked concerns among Republicans and Democrats over the frequency with which senior Trump officials are using Signal to hold sensitive conversations.
Senators say the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), will also investigate the security lapse, according to senators on the panel.
The topic was discussed extensively when five senior officials, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, testified before the Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe were part of the chat group on Signal put together by national security adviser Mike Waltz that also included Vice President Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The group discussed the operational details of a pending military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Waltz reportedly added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group by mistake, and the error was compounded when Hegseth texted detailed information about the planned strikes to the group before they took place.
One Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter said many Republican colleagues are concerned the security lapse could become a significant political problem if not addressed in a credible way.
“It’s not going away anytime soon. There’s a lot of questions they need to answer, and a lot of questions we need to ask,” the GOP lawmaker said.
The source said that “hopefully” the administration would investigate the security lapse thoroughly, but added that the Armed Services and Intelligence panels will conduct their own investigations.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said if senior officials in the Biden administration had made a similar mistake, Republicans in Congress would be blowing their tops.
Inadvertently looping a journalist into text chain discussing military planning was “really bad,” Murkowski added. “This is what happens when you don’t really have your act together.”
Asked whether Republicans should hold hearings, Murkowski said: “Think about what we do if Biden were president and this came out. … We would raise the roof.”
“Seems to me it’s in everybody’s best interest to know that when you have these conversations, even if they’re very thoughtful engagement amongst leaders, that you have them in a secured environment,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday encouraged the Armed Services Committee to delve into the issue.
“We’re getting to the bottom of what that whole text chain entailed. Obviously, people are asking questions, and they deserve answers,” Thune told reporters.
Asked if there should be a full Senate investigation, Thune said, “I think that’s happening already.”
He noted Gabbard and Ratcliffe “were in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee for a very long period of time in an open setting.”
“I suspect the Armed Services Committee may want to have some folks testify and have some of those questions answered as well,” he said. “I think everybody has acknowledged, including the White House, that mistakes were made.
“What we want to do is make sure that something like that doesn’t happen again,” he said.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Intelligence panel, said the Trump administration should take the lead in investigating to what extent the discussion of military strategy may have compromised national security.
He said it should be up to the administration to determine whether laws were broken and whether there should be criminal charges.
“I’m going to leave that part of the discussion up to the executive branch at this point. They’re responsible for their determination of their own people in this case,” he said.
“I will say that I think there was a mistake made,” he added. “I think this is going to be one heck of a learning experience for some people.”
Gabbard and Ratcliffe, testifying before senators Tuesday, disputed that any classified information was shared on the Signal chat, even though lawmakers appeared skeptical of that claim.
“Senator, I’ll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard insisted during questioning from Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the Democratic vice chair of the Intelligence panel.
Ratcliffe told lawmakers that his use of Signal to discuss planning was authorized.
Warner later pushed back on those answers, casting doubt on the claim that the operational details discussed on the chat were somehow declassified.
“The notional idea that somehow, after the fact, this information was declassified doesn’t pass the smell test. We still couldn’t get an answer of whether the phones that were being used [were] private phones, government phones,” he said.
“Some of these individuals — when they’re traveling, they have access to secure communications. Why didn’t they use this?” he said. “This is not a one-off. This is a pattern of sloppiness that makes our country unsafe.”
Warner noted the Signal chat revealed disagreement among several senior officials over the intended strike.
“If we had access to disputes between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his senior leadership over a military action, that showed conflict, we would do a lot to try to get that,” he said.
He said if the entire conversation is not classified, as Gabbard, Ratcliffe and other officials now claim, they should make all of it available for review.
“I expect that we’re going to get answers on this. We don’t have answers,” he said.
