Members of President Trump’s cabinet insisted at a House committee hearing on Wednesday that there was nothing wrong with using a consumer messaging app to discuss U.S. military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen.
On Tuesday, the spy chiefs told the Senate that they did not believe any of their material, no classified “intelligence,” had been exposed in the chat, where senior officials discussed the timing, advisability and possible targets of the administration’s planned airstrikes on Houthis in Yemen.
Their answer at least left open the idea that some of the Pentagon plans shared in the chat might have been classified.
But on Wednesday there was no hint of wavering, with Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, asserting that no classified material had been put into the group chat.
“There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared,” she said.
Republicans on the committee all but ignored the issue, focusing their questions on the official subject of the hearing, the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment.
Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who is a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, was one of the few Republicans on the panel to offer a defense of the chats, if partially in jest.
“I will note I always use fire emojis when I see terrorists getting killed,” he said, referring to the three emojis — a fist bump, a U.S. flag and fire — that Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, put in the chat, held on the Signal app.
Democrats, who have struggled to find their footing in the Republican-controlled federal government, appeared in lock step as they confronted one of the most notable blunders Trump administration officials have made since taking office.
In question after question, the members of the Democratic caucus hammered away at the issue of the chat group during their allotted five minutes.
Representative Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is a former Air Force officer, said she had initially intended to discuss biosecurity and bioterrorism threats facing the United States.
Instead, she said that she would devote her time to pressing Mr. Trump’s national security team on the risks of communicating on a commercial messaging app.
“The threat is in the House, the threat is across the dais,” Ms. Houlahan said, pointing to Ms. Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, who is the director of the C.I.A., and the other intelligence officials who appeared at the hearing. “I need to ask these questions. It’s my job to ask these questions of you.”
She and other Democrats argued that the chats were vulnerable to interception by an adversarial power and would have endangered American pilots if the conversation had been given to the Houthis, an Iranian-backed militia group that has sophisticated air-defense systems.
The intelligence report is an annual assessment by federal agencies of global threats that is presented to the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees. In past committee meetings, Republicans have sometimes focused intently on single issues that they are passionate about — like perceived flaws in the intelligence community’s work on Russia or the ouster of a Trump loyalist from a key intelligence job by Biden administration — and Democrats have talked about the substance of the hearing topic.
But the roles were reversed this year, with Democrats relentlessly asking about the Signal chat, convinced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had improperly shared classified information on a nonclassified platform.
The editor in chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently added to the chat group. The conversation, which The Atlantic published this week, showed that Mr. Hegseth had shared critical details of the upcoming operation, including the precise timing of attacks.
At the House hearing on Wednesday, Trump administration officials downplayed the matter.
Ms. Gabbard noted that at the time the information on the strikes was put in the chat, the same information was being provided to allies. Mr. Ratcliffe said the messages disclosed by The Atlantic made clear he had shared no classified intelligence; his contributions to the discussion indeed seemed to skirt any details revealing the agencies’ precise activities.
But Democrats rebuked that line of defense. Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, for instance, took issue with the intelligence officials’ assertion that the information in the Signal chat on the Houthi strikes was not classified.
“You all know that’s a lie,” he said. “It’s a lie to the country.”
The hearing became contentious at many moments. An exchange between Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, and Mr. Ratcliffe briefly devolved into a shouting match as Mr. Gomez asked witnesses whether “Pete Hegseth had been drinking before he leaked classified information.”
“I think that’s an offensive line of questioning — the answer’s no,” Mr. Ratcliffe shot back.
During his confirmation process, Mr. Hegseth made a commitment to senators that he would abstain from consuming alcohol if he were confirmed as defense secretary.
Some of the most effective questioning came from Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who is a combat veteran. Mr. Crow pointed out that the Houthis have been able to shoot down U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones, one of the weapons used in the strikes on Yemen.
With an aide holding up posters behind him, Mr. Crow described the Houthis’ advanced air-defense systems and then said it was outrageous that the administration was not accepting responsibility for the leak.
“It is a leadership failure, and that’s why Secretary Hegseth, who undoubtedly transmitted classified sensitive operational information via this chain, must resign immediately,” he said.
By the end of the hearing, more Democrats on Capitol Hill had joined in calling for Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Waltz to resign.
And though most Republicans remained in line with Mr. Trump’s response strategy to downplay and deny the seriousness of the episode, at least one Republican, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, called for an inspector general to review the incident.
Mr. Wicker, the chairman of the Senate panel with oversight authority of the Pentagon, said that he and the ranking Democratic member of the committee would request a classified briefing into the matter.
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