31 March 2025, 20:55
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Picture: Alamy
By Henry Moore
The White House has insisted its investigation into the Signal group chat leak is “closed” after Donald Trump threw his support behind national security advisor Mike Waltz.
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Last week, Mr Waltz mistakenly added a journalist from the Atlantic to an unsecure group chat where top-secret war plans about strikes on Huthi strongholds in Yemen.
"As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
"And this case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned."
"There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again," she continued.
Read More:Donald Trump says Mike Waltz does not need to apologise over group chat disaster
Read More:Trump's team make MAGA mistake after revealing secret war plans to journalist accidentally added to group chat
One message shows Hegseth detailing a timeline and weapons systems to be used in an attack on 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched and two hours before the window to take out a Houthi 'terrorist target' on March 15
One message shows Hegseth detailing a timeline and weapons systems to be used in an attack on 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched and two hours before the window to take out a Houthi 'terrorist target' on March 15. Picture: The Atlantic
"And we're moving forward. And the president and Mike Waltz and his entire national security team have been working together very well, if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team."
The Trump administration was slammed by both sides of the political aisle after the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to a group chat including Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Mr Waltz said he took "full responsibility" - but also accused the journalist of being "the bottom scum".
The group chat on encrypted app Signal saw him, vice-president JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and others discuss secret plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen.
It also featured Vance and Hegseth criticising European countries for relying on the US military, calling them "pathetic".
The extraordinary leak has led to some commentators questioning if the officials involved could lose their jobs - but Donald Trump has sought to play it down.
Mr Waltz previously told Fox News: "We made a mistake, we’re moving forward and we’re going to continue to knock it out of the park for this President.”
Asked if an aide could be blamed for the error, Mr Waltz insisted: "A staffer wasn’t responsible. And look, I take full responsibility. I built the group."
Mr Waltz then attacked Mr Goldberg, who is the editor of the Atlantic, a liberal magazine, calling him a “loser” and the “bottom scum of journalists”.
Mr Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the highly sensitive information had been shared, more than two hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach.
Goldberg said the messages in the chat, named ‘Houthi PC Small Group’ included “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”
He said that “Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 am” The US began bombing Yemen around 2 pm the same day.
“It should go without saying—but I'll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app,” he wrote in The Atlantic.