If Mike Waltz knows anything about national security, he’s doing an excellent job of keeping it a secret.
Not only did President Donald Trump’s national security adviser create the now-infamous group chat that included a journalist from The Atlantic, but he also left sensitive information exposed on his Venmo account—including his friends list—until the media called him out.
According to Wired, which broke the story, both Waltz and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had their accounts on the mobile payment app Venmo set to public until Wednesday afternoon.
For Waltz, this exposed a list of 328 “friends,” including journalists like CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes and anchor Brianna Keilar, and MSNBC executive producer Lauren Peikoff—an interesting twist, given Trump’s longstanding attacks on both networks for being “dishonest” for simply reporting the truth about him. A separate analysis by The Prospect also found that Waltz’s connections included the apparent winner of the Miss Florida pageant.
His and Wiles’ friends lists also featured key White House officials, including National Security Council staffer Walker Barrett, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.
To make matters worse, Waltz didn’t even attempt to conceal his identity. His Venmo profile used his full name and even featured a photo of him.
Unfortunately, none of the transactions linked to Waltz or Wiles were publicly visible, so there’s no telling what kind of payments were exchanged.
“Approximately ten minutes after requesting comment, Michael Waltz’s account disappeared from Venmo,” The Prospect reported.
But that wasn’t the only security lapse. On Wednesday, German news magazine Der Spiegel revealed that its reporters easily uncovered email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords belonging to top Trump officials. This information was reportedly accessible via commercial search engines and hacked data dumps available online.
Among those affected were Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and—who else?—Waltz. While the exact recency of the data wasn’t always clear, Der Spiegel reported that “[m]ost of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn.” Some were even associated with accords on Dropbox, WhatsApp, and Signal, the chat app at the center of this week’s scandal.
This latest cybersecurity debacle follows Waltz’s reckless decision to add journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat where U.S. officials discussed a pending military operation in Yemen.
Since then, Waltz has doubled down on evading responsibility for his actions, claiming he has no idea who Goldberg is and denying he ever had the journalist’s number saved, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Despite all this, Trump is standing by his embattled adviser for now, telling NBC News on Tuesday that Waltz “has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.” How long that support will last is another question. Eventually, someone has to take the fall—and, at least right now, Waltz looks like the easiest target.
Waltz has yet to comment on his latest failure to grasp the basics of digital security. But given this administration’s track record, it’s safe to assume that Trump’s team will spin the story by blaming the media rather than holding Waltz accountable. Maybe, while he’s at it, Elon Musk can launch an investigation into why Trump’s Cabinet picks keep failing at technology.
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