The administration of United States President Donald Trump has continued to face fallout from an article in The Atlantic that revealed editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a group chat where top-level government officials discussed plans for bombing Yemen.
The White House remained in damage control mode on Tuesday, seeking to dismiss allegations that government secrets were at risk.
“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” Trump said at a meeting of US ambassadors, waving the scandal aside.
“ We’ve pretty much looked into it. It’s pretty simple, to be honest. It’s just something that can happen.”
He told reporters he had no intention of seeking punishments, barring the use of the social media app Signal or asking for an apology from those involved.
Trump’s comments come in response to Goldberg’s article, published a day prior, wherein the editor explains how he received an invitation on the messaging platform Signal from a user identified as White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
Goldberg accepted the invitation. He quickly found himself in the midst of a conversation about the merits of bombing Houthi fighters in Yemen.
While Goldberg declined to quote specific military information from the chat, he did share in his published article interactions between officials at the highest level of government, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Vance, Hegseth and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, for instance, were quoted as debating the timing of the attacks and whether economic gain could be “extracted” from Europe in exchange for the bombings.
The vice president, in particular, expressed concern that the bombings would do more to benefit European trade in the Red Sea, where the Houthis are known to strike naval and shipping vessels.
The article created a splash in Washington, DC, almost as soon as it was published. Questions were raised about why sensitive information was discussed on a non-government platform and whether the text messages would be preserved, as required by federal records laws.
Some of those questions were put directly to two of the participants in the Signal chat, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday, facing a grilling from Democrats.
“ This was not only sloppy. It not only violated all procedures, but if this information had gotten out, American lives could have been lost. If the Houthis had this information, they could reposition their defensive systems,” said Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee.
“ It’s also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check Security Hygiene 101.”
Senator Ron Wyden, another Democrat at the hearing, called the Signal chat “ obviously reckless, obviously dangerous”.
“Both the mishandling of classified information and the deliberate destruction of federal records are potential crimes that ought to be investigated immediately,” Wyden said. “And I want to make clear that I’m of the view that there ought to be resignation, starting with the national security advisor and the secretary of defence.”
Questions of classified information
The position of the White House, however, has been that no classified information was released over the Signal chat.
In his article, Goldberg is clear that top-secret information was included in the group chat’s messages.
“The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel,” Goldberg wrote.
Had Goldberg repeated that information in his publication, he could have opened himself up to legal repercussions. Instead, Goldberg offered a broad-strokes description of what transpired in the chat.
“What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” he wrote.
But on Tuesday, the Trump administration contested that assessment, saying no secrets were revealed in the Signal chat.
“Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on social media. “Here are the facts about his latest story: 1. No ‘war plans’ were discussed. 2. No classified material was sent to the thread.”
Ratcliffe and Gabbard repeated similar remarks at the hearing at Capitol Hill, denying ever sharing top-secret information on Signal, whether on that chat or another.
“ To be clear, I haven’t participated in any Signal group messaging that relates to any classified information at all,” Ratcliffe said.
“ I have the same answer,” Gabbard echoed. Unlike Ratcliffe, Gabbard declined to even acknowledge whether she was a participant in the chat, as reported in Goldberg’s article.
Their position led to a heated confrontation with Senator Warner, who argued that — if the chat did not contain classified information — its contents should be released immediately for review.
“Why are you not going to get into the specifics? Is it because it’s all classified?” Warner asked.
“Because this is currently under review by the national security —,” Gabbard began to respond, as Warner interjected: “Because it’s all classified? If it’s not classified, share the text now.”
At the meeting with the US ambassadors, meanwhile, Trump denied there was any national security breach.
“ Our national security now is stronger than it’s ever been,” Trump told reporters. Instead, he blamed technology — and the Signal app specifically — for allowing Goldberg to access the private chat.
“ It’s not a perfect technology. There is no perfect technology. The really good ones are very cumbersome, very hard to access,” he said.
Trump reignites rivalry with The Atlantic
The scandal over the sensitive information in the Signal chat also allowed Trump to renew his broadside against The Atlantic magazine, where Goldberg works.
Trump has criticised the magazine in the past, particularly after it published a 2020 report that claimed the Republican leader had privately disparaged fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers”. Trump himself is not a military veteran, but he has publicly questioned the service of soldiers like the late Senator John McCain.
Goldberg authored that article as well. Trump denied the allegations at the time, calling the article a “disgrace”.
The Republican leader has long railed against mainstream media outlets, even suggesting that their reporting could be illegal.
As he addressed the scandal at Tuesday’s meeting, Trump singled out Goldberg yet again for his reporting.
“I happen to know the guy’s a total sleaze bag,” Trump said. “The Atlantic is a failed magazine. Does very, very poorly. Nobody gives a damn about it. This gives it a little bit of a shot. And I will tell you this: They’ve made up more stories. And they’re just a failing magazine. The public understands that.”
Trump then turned to Waltz, who was also seated at the meeting, and proceeded to defend the adviser’s apparent mistake in inviting Goldberg to the Signal chat.
“He’s a very good man. That man is a very good man, right there, that you criticise,” Trump said, gesturing to Waltz. “ He’s a very good man, and he will continue to do a good job.”
Waltz, a former US representative for the state of Florida, himself chimed in to point the finger at The Atlantic and its editor.
“ I think there’s a lot of the lessons. There’s a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves making up lies about this president,” Waltz said.
“This one in particular, I’ve never met. Don’t know. Never communicated with. And we are looking into him and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”
Democrats, however, have praised Goldberg for his restraint in not publishing national security secrets and for voluntarily removing himself from the Signal chat.
“ No matter how much the secretary of defence or others want to disparage him, this journalist had at least the ethics to not report, I think, everything he heard,” Senator Warner said at the intelligence hearing.
Trump doubles-down on ‘free-loading’ Europe
What Goldberg did quote verbatim, however, were messages where top officials discussed whether to delay the attacks on Yemen — and whether Europe would benefit most from the bombings.
An account seeming to belong to Vice President Vance, for example, posted a comment highlighting how much European trade runs through the Red Sea and surrounding waterways.
“3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” Vance reportedly wrote.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”
Vance seemed to back postponing the bombings by a month, but he ultimately withdrew his objections — though not without a further swipe at Europe.
“If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance appears to have written.
To that, Defense Secretary Hegseth reportedly replied, “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
The backroom haggling appears to confirm what has long been speculated in the public sphere: that relations between the US and Europe are on a downward slide.
Trump has accused Europe of taking advantage of the US, pointing to trade deficits that show Americans consuming more European goods than vice versa. On April 2, his administration plans to implement what Trump has called “reciprocal tariffs“, matching import taxes other countries impose.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Trump was asked if he agreed with Hegseth and Vance’s assessment that Europe was “free-loading”.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” Trump asked, deadpan. “Yeah. I think they’ve been freeloading. The European Union’s been absolutely terrible to us on trade. Terrible.”
He then switched direction, touting his peace negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, as well as the upcoming tariffs. “ I think I’ve been very fair to countries that have really abused us economically for many, many decades.”
