The Trump administration is attempting to shut down growing concerns over the war plans leakeven as congressional requests for independent investigations have begun to surface.
Senior members of the Trump administration—including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz—discussed confidential war plans in a Signal group chat, in which journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally included.
“As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team, and this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
Leavitt, who has a history of lyingsaid that “steps have been made” to ensure that another leak doesn’t happen in the future but gave no details on what those purported steps were.
Despite taking responsibility for the national security breach, Waltz has not been let go. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has heaped blame on Goldberg and even members of his family, and billionaire Trump financier Elon Musk is supposedly tasked with investigating the leak.
Though the White House alleged that there wasn’t anything more to investigate, the two highest ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee asked the acting inspector general of defense to investigate the leak on Monday.
“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen. If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know,” Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who is chair of the committee, and Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member, wrote.
Even pro-Trump Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma admitted in a CNN appearance on Sunday that an inquiry into the leak would be “entirely appropriate.”
Similarly, Democrats in the House Armed Services Committee have sent a request to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to conduct an inquiry into the chat to determine if national security was harmed.
“They’ve done nothing to show that this will not happen again. This is a gross violation of the law,” Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts told CNN on Monday.
Since the leak, Waltz has claimed that he doesn’t know Goldberg and has offered up dubious theories about how the journalist was added to the chat.
“This isn’t ‚The Matrix,‘ phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Goldberg responded on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true.”
Both active duty service members and veterans have expressed anger about Trump officials evading punishment for the leak, noting that low-level members of the services have gotten in trouble for far less serious breaches.
As the Trump administration’s attempted cover-up continues, more questions seem to be raised than those that are answered.
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