Americas

Americas

Trump dismisses Signal security failure as ‘the only glitch in two months’

26 March 2025 09:35 (UTC +04:00)

Donald Trump defended his embattled national security adviser on Tuesday and said the leak of highly classified military plans was “the only glitch in two months”, as scrutiny intensified into how top US officials shared operational details for bombing Yemen in a group chat, APA reports citing the Guardian.

In an interview with NBC, the president said, “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” as Democrats called for an investigation into the sharing of the plans for this month’s major airstrikes in Yemen on the Signal app. Later on Tuesday, during a meeting with ambassadors, Trump said his administration would investigate the incident but claimed “there was no classified information” shared on Signal.

“Certainly we’ll look at this,” Trump said. “But the main thing was nothing happened. The attack was totally successful.”

The Atlantic reported that Waltz, who was a congressman representing Florida before being appointed national security adviser by Trump, sent a connection request on the chat app Signal to the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on 11 March. Goldberg was then included in a chat group in which detailed information about plans for an attack on the Houthi armed group in Yemen was shared.

Trump told NBC News that Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation, and defended Waltz, claiming that the leak was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”, as the White House sought to downplay the incident.

Asked how Goldberg was added to the chat, Trump said: “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”