National security advisor Mike Waltz said he accepted “full responsibility” for a high-level Trump administration planning chat about strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen being accidentally shared with a top journalist from The Atlantic.
“I take full responsibility. I built the group,” Waltz told Fox News’s Ingraham Angle on Tuesday. “It’s embarrassing. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
Waltz went on to call Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote a widely read article claiming Waltz added him to a Signal group discussing the strikes, was a “loser” who may have “deliberately” tricked someone in the administration into getting access to the chat.
The administration dismissed Goldberg as a reporter who peddled in “hoaxes” hours earlier.
The Atlantic has said it stands by its reporting, which claims that Trump administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance discussed detailed aspects of the strikes including targets and weapons details, breaking with normal protocols (and potentially federal espionage law) that require discussing such sensitive information over secure government channels.
“Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor, and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” a spokesperson for the magazine told NBC News. “Our journalists are continuing to fearlessly and independently report the truth in the public interest.”
The White House has said Waltz will lead a probe into the leak, and the national security advisor told Fox News some of the “best technical minds” are investigating what happened.
The administration has attempted to downplay the leak scandal, claiming that no classified materials were sent in the thread, though it has maintained elsewhere in a lawsuit regarding deportation flights to El Salvador that reminiscent operational details are state secrets outside the jurisdiction of court scrutiny.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.