The Atlantic on Wednesday released new evidence on the text thread that the most senior Trump administration officials used to plan an attack on a terrorist group in Yemen, and it proves that President Donald Trump, his top officials, and his press team have been flagrantly lying about what went down.
After Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other Trump administration officials on the chain used the excuse that none of the information on the Signal text thread was classified, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg—the journalist who was mistakenly included in the chat—released more texts from the chain showing that classified information was indeed shared.
“Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a defensive interview on Tuesday in which he sought to downplay the seriousness of his errors and blame everyone but himself for the mistakes.
But The Atlantic released a screenshot of text in which Hegseth discussed the exact times bombs would fall and the exact weapons systems the military would use in the attack on the Houthi rebel group.
As for whether information like that would be classified, the answer is yes.
According to the director of national intelligence's own guidelines, "information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack"—which is what Hegseth shared—is top secret.
“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this,” a U.S. Department of Defense official told CNN’s Natasha Bertrand. “We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the servicemembers carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this.”
The release of that text also shows that current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in severe cover-her-ass mode at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday, when she said she didn't remember if those details were shared. Her memory lapse was not believable then, and it’s really not believable now that we know those details were shared in the text chain, which Gabbard was included on.
What’s more, the new texts also make it plainly clear that national security adviser Mike Waltz added Goldberg to the thread—making the crazy excuses he made in a Tuesday night appearance on Fox News look even more unhinged.
When asked how an Atlantic reporter got on the thread, Waltz replied, “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contacts and then gets sucked into this group.”
If Waltz had just looked back at the text thread, he’d get the answer that he was the one who added Goldberg.
Another text The Atlantic released shows that the text chain is not the only one being used by the administration. The chain was called the “Houthi PC Small Group,” and in a newly released text, Waltz wrote, “As we stated in the in the [sic] first PC …”—which strongly suggests that other PC chats exist. And this raises questions about what other classified material has been illegally shared in an unsecured messaging app.
After The Atlantic released additional texts, the Trump admin's excuses and conspiracy theories got even dumber—and even implicated them further in the scandal.
Leavitt’s response was to simply and nonsensically deny that war plans were shared. And Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy who was on the text chain while he was in Russia, seemed to admit that the Signal thread in which the classified information was being shared was on his personal cellphone—which almost certainly violates the law.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, center, is flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel, left, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on March 25, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
“I had no access to my personal devices until I returned from my trip. That is the responsible way for me to make these trips and that is how I always conduct myself,” Witkoff wrote in a post on X in which he claimed he was being responsible by not bringing his personal device to Russia. However, his statement ended up confirming that he used his personal device for the text chain in which classified information was being shared.
As Republicans make ridiculous excuses to explain away the danger the Trump administration put American troops in by discussing war plans in an unsecured text chain, Democrats are ratcheting up the heat, launching investigations, and calling for heads to roll.
“As a member of Oversight, I’m sending letters to the identifiable officials in the Hegseth Disaster Signal Chat demanding that they retain all messages for any pending litigation and Congressional investigations,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, wrote in a Bluesky post on Tuesday. “Any deletion of the chat is a willful destruction of evidence.”
And in a letter to Trump on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Hegseth “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history” and demanded his immediate dismissal.
“The so-called Secretary of Defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans—including the timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets, and the weapons to be used—during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter. His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives, and likely violated the law,” Jeffries wrote. “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should be fired immediately.”
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