All the Ways Trump Officials Are Downplaying the “War Plans” Group Chat – Mother Jones

March 25, 2025 Add Comment
All the Ways Trump Officials Are Downplaying the “War Plans” Group Chat – Mother Jones


Senate Democrats grilled National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, center, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, right, at a Tuesday hearing over their participation in a leaked Signal chat discussing war plans in Yemen.Aaron Schwartz/Sipa/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Just after noon Eastern Time on Monday, the Atlantic published a story that seemed, on its face, too absurd to be true.

Entitled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans,” and written by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, the story reported that Goldberg had been, seemingly accidentally, added to a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal that featured Cabinet officials—and even Vice President JD Vance—discussing plans to bomb Houthi movement targets across Yemen. The Signal group’s members reportedly included a who’s who of top national security officials; among them were National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. On March 15, the US carried out the plan the chat’s members discussed and debated.

Which is to say: The details reported in the Atlantic story were, in fact, legit. Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the National Security Council, also confirmed that, telling the Atlantic that the Signal group “appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.” Hughes added, “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”

But upon publication of the story, top Democrats quickly argued otherwise. Senior Democrats on the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight committees sent a letter Monday to Waltz, Gabbard, Hegseth, and Rubio, writing that their actions “may have constituted a security breach” and demanding they respond to a series of questions about whether classified information was shared and how often Signal is used for such conversations, among other inquiries. Senate Democrats also slammed the leak as “malpractice,” “amateur behavior,” and “an egregious threat to US national security.” Democrats also used a previously scheduled Tuesday morning Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on “worldwide threats” to question Gabbard and Ratcliffe about the leak.

Some Republicans—including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R- La.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—have conceded that the leak constituted a serious mistake. But President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and several of the officials included in the group message have gone to great lengths to hide their embarrassment and claim the whole thing was, actually, no big deal—even though Hegseth, Ratcliffe, Rubio, and Waltz, for example, previously criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, and Gabbard just this month decried “unauthorized release of classified information.”

Here are all the ways thus far that they have tried to obfuscate and downplay what national security experts are calling a massive—and possibly illegal—leak.

Claiming the information shared was not classified

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed in a post on X Tuesday morning that “No ‘war plans’ were discussed” and “No classified material was sent to the thread.” She added that “the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread.”

A few hours later, Gabbard and Ratcliffe followed Leavitt’s lead when they testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and repeatedly claimed the information was not classified.

“My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information,” Ratcliffe claimed at one point. (Though, as he noted in a 2019 interview with Fox, “mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act”—a law lawyers also told the Atlantic could come into play in the fallout from the Signal chat debacle.)

“There was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard subsequently agreed.

But Democrats on the Committee were not satisfied, charging that the Trump officials should release the full transcript of the chat if the leaking of the material did not constitute a national security threat. (The Atlantic did not publish the whole chat, writing that it was withholding information that could be used by foreign adversaries and was related to specific intelligence operations and personnel.) “If there is no classified material, share it with the committee,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told Gabbard. “You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security. [You’re] bobbing and weaving and trying to filibuster your answer.”

Sen. Angus King (D-Maine) also wasn’t having it. “So the attack sequencing and timing and weapons and targets you don’t consider to have been classified?” he asked Gabbard. To that, the Director of National Intelligence said she deferred to Hegseth and the National Security Council—prompting King to again demand that officials involved in the chat release the full transcript if the material was not, in fact, classified. “You’re the head of the intelligence community,” King also reminded Gabbard. “You’re supposed to know about classifications.”

On an episode of the Bulwark podcast that aired Tuesday, Goldberg rejected officials’ claims that the information was not classified. “They are wrong,” he said.

Declining to answer questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee

At the Tuesday hearing, Gabbard repeatedly refused to even confirm whether she was on the group chat in response to a question posed by Warner. “You are not ‘TG’ on this group chat?” Warner pressed, after Gabbard’s first denial. “I’m not going to get into the specifics,” she replied.

She also declined to respond to a question from Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) about whether she was using her public or private phone to participate in the Signal chat. “I won’t speak to this because it’s under review by the National Security Council,” Gabbard said, adding the information would be shared when the reveiw was complete. “What is under review?” Reed asked. “It’s a very simple question.” Gabbard again stonewalled.

Trashing the Atlantic and Jeffery Goldberg

When Trump was first asked about the leak by a reporter on Monday, he appeared to be unaware of it. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, adding later, “You’re telling me about it for the first time.” Nonetheless, he felt confident enough to trash the Atlantic: “I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic. To me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine.”

Musk did the same, posting on X on Monday night: “Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine, because no one ever goes there.”

Hegseth, for his part, characterized Goldberg as a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist” when speaking to reporters on Monday—even though the National Security Council had already confirmed the veracity of the chat.

Leavitt also tried to undermine Goldberg, writing in her X post that he is “well-known for his sensationalist spin.” (Goldberg, and the Atlantic, do not appear to have responded to those attacks.)

Claiming that, all in all, it wasn’t such a big deal

Officials have also tried to simply dismiss the incident as not that big of a problem.

After learning the full details of what occurred, Trump told NBC News that the incident was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one,” adding that Waltz “has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”

Musk appeared to try to downplay the significance of the leak, writing in a post on X, “Most government systems are shockingly primitive” in response to a post from author and cartoonist Scott Adams arguing the same point.

An especially telling exchange came when, during the Tuesday hearing, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) asked Ratcliffe: “Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge mistake, correct?”

To this, Ratcliffe had a clear response: “No.”





Source link