US President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, said he took full responsibility for inviting a reporter onto a group Signal app chat of Trump administration officials discussing plans for a looming military strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
Waltz said this on Tuesday in an interview on The Ingraham Angle, a programme on Fox News, calling it embarrassing.
“I take full responsibility. I built the group. It's embarrassing. We're going to get to the bottom of it,”; Waltz said.
It was gathered that Waltz unintentionally invited Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, to join the encrypted chat called Houthi PC Small Group on March 11.
Others in the chat included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Meanwhile, Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt each said no classified information was shared in the chat.
However, after Goldberg’s report described the types of weapons to be used and the timing of the strikes, Democrats called for Hegseth and Waltz to resign over the security breach.
“Putting aside that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system, 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. Who are all the names? Who are they?”; Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, asked.
Trump, who has defended Waltz, said he won't be fired over the incident, adding that it was a mistake.
