The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded the resignations of senior Trump administration officials who used a Signal thread to discuss a bombing campaign in Yemen.
During a hearing Tuesday, committee vice chair Mark Warner grilled intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard and slammed national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after they failed to conduct “security hygiene 101” without realizing The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a text chain.
“Putting aside for a moment 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,” Warner said. “Security hygiene 101 — who are all the names? Who are they?”
During the hearing, Warner posted on X that “incompetence is not an option.”
“Pete Hegseth should resign. Mike Waltz should resign,” he wrote.
The committee heard testimony from Gabbard as well as CIA director John Ratcliffe, both of whom appeared on the Signal thread.
In his opening remarks, Warner stressed to administration officials that intelligence suggests China and Russia “are trying to break into encrypted systems,” like the encrypted messaging app Signal.
“If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired,” he added. “This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error.”
On Monday, The Atlantic published Goldberg’s explosive report detailing his inadvertent front-row seat to the Trump administration’s planning efforts for a bombing campaign targeting Houthis in Yemen earlier this month.
Waltz started a group chat on Signal with Vice President JD Vance, several Cabinet secretaries and other top White House officials, and appeared to accidentally add Goldberg.
Earlier this month, Trump announced on social media that he ordered the U.S. military “to launch decisive and powerful” actions against the Yemeni group, which has blocked key shipping lanes and attacked Israeli vessels and other commercial ships in the Red Sea following Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza.
Goldberg revealed that Hegseth texted the group with a plan of action two hours before the bombs fell on March 15.
Gabbard told Warner that the Signal thread didn’t share any classified information but refused to share its contents, or even admit that she was on the chain.
“If it’s not classified, share the texts now,” Warner told Gabbard. “Share it with the committee. You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security.”
CIA director John Ratcliffe also testified that he did not know how Goldberg was added to the thread.
“Don’t insult the intelligence of the American people,” Democratic Senator Michael Bennet told him.
“You’re the CIA director! Why didn’t you call out that he was present on the thread?” Bennet said.
Speaking to NBC News on Tuesday, the president defended Waltz as a “good man” who “learned a lesson.”
Goldberg’s presence had “no impact at all” and the attacks were “perfectly successful,” Trump said.
Hegseth, meanwhile, has contradicted the White House’s admission of the authenticity of the leak and has sought to discredit The Atlantic and Goldberg instead.
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes,” Hegseth told reporters Monday. “This is a guy who peddles in garbage.”
