Hillary Clinton has shared a scathing response after members of Donald Trump’s administration appeared to add a journalist to a group chat discussing war plans.
As previously reported, on Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg made the bombshell claim that he had received a connection request on the encrypted messaging service Signal on March 11, from someone identified as ‘Michael Waltz’.
While he initially did not believe it was the real Michael Waltz, who is President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, he accepted the request anyway.
He was later added to a group called ‘Houthi PC small group’ which had 18 members including ‘MAR’ who he believed was secretary of state Marco Antonio Rubio, ‘JD Vance’, ‘TG’ who he believed was Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, ‘Pete Hegseth’, and ‘Scott B’, who he believed was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The group engaged in detailed discussions about policy as well as explicit operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including which weapons the US would deploy as well as information on targets, shared by the account named as Pete Hegseth.
Goldberg began to think the group was legitimate after members began celebrating in the chat when bombs were dropped against Houthi militants in Yemen.
The Atlantic shared screenshots of some of the messages shared between the group, and the National Security Council confirmed it believed the thread to be authentic.
The National Security Council said in a statement, shared by NBC News: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Following the messages being shared, former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who had previously faced intense criticism from Republicans for her use of a private email server, responded to the news by tweeting a screenshot of the Atlantic article and adding: “[Side-eye emoji] You have got to be kidding me.”
Clinton’s email controversy was a major point of contention during the 2016 presidential election, in which she was the Democratic nominee.
It had been discovered that during her time as the secretary of state, Clinton had used a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers.
After an FBI investigation lasting several years, it was determined that Clinton’s server did not contain any information or emails that were clearly marked classified. The agencies did, however, retrospectively determine that 100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified when they were sent, including 22 that were deemed “top secret”.
Some experts and members of Congress had claimed that Clinton’s use of the private server violated federal law.
FBI director James Comey layer confirmed that the FBI investigation had concluded that Clinton had been “extremely careless” but recommended that no charges be filed as she hadn’t acted with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution.
The latest incident was downplayed by Hegseth, who made disparaging remarks about Goldberg, calling him a “so-called journalist”, when asked about the scandal and added: “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
“This is their plan, and he was taking their plan and sharing it with a bunch of civilian leaders.”
He added that Hegseth appeared to be “trying to deflect from the fact that he participated in a conversation on an unclassified, commercial messaging app that you probably shouldn’t participate in.”
The National Security Council added in its statement: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”
President Trump had meanwhile claimed to have no knowledge of the matter, telling a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday: “You’re telling me about it for the first time.”
He later made light of the incident by sharing a post by Elon Musk berating the publication. Musk had written: “Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine because no one ever goes there.”
It was reported that Trump later read the article, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on a statement on Monday that the president “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”
