New revelations regarding the disclosure of sensitive military information in an unsecured messaging app by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amplified calls for his resignation on Wednesday, as fallout over the scandal continued for a third day.
“Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this,” Trump told reporters late Wednesday, hours after The Atlantic published more of the transcripts from a Signal group chat that included Hegseth, other top Trump officials, and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who was mistakenly invited to join. The messages revealed that Hegseth provided real-time details of a March 15 U.S. air assault on Yemen’s Houthi militant, including the launch times of F-18 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and Tomahawk missiles—information national security experts say is inherently classified. In one message to the group, according to The Atlantic’s transcript, Hegseth revealed the exact time “THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.”
“Everyone on that text chain should have been fired, but certainly Pete Hegseth needs to resign,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told TIME in an interview on Wednesday in response to the revelation that Hegseth shared details of a military operation on Signal.
The other Administration officials on the chat included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who convened the group chat and mistakenly added Goldberg to it. After Hegseth, Waltz’s role in the scandal has drawn the most outrage, and he said late Tuesday that he takes full responsibility for the “embarrassing” leak.
Trump defended his embattled Defense Secretary, who was narrowly confirmed to lead the Pentagon two months earlier despite having less experience in the military than his predecessors and facing allegations of heavy drinking. “Hegseth, how do you bring Hegseth into it?” Trump said to reporters Wednesday. “He had nothing to do. Look, look, it’s all a witch hunt.”
Sen. Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told TIME on Wednesday that “no military officer would survive this” and called the Administration’s handling of the matter “an egregious breach of operational security.”
“Any military officer who inadvertently disclosed or recklessly handled such sensitive information would lose their security clearance and likely face court-martial,” he says. “Secretary Hegseth should resign by noon today.” Asked whether Waltz should also resign, Ossoff responded, “He’s also clearly incompetent and should be gone.”
Even some Republicans are now pushing for a review. Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced on Wednesday he would request an inspector general investigation into the use of Signal for discussing military operations. Signal is often recommended for use by privacy advocates because of its encrypted messaging, but it is generally not considered secure enough for national security issues.
Wicker, one of the few Republicans who has been skeptical of Hegseth’s leadership, questioned the Administration’s refusal to acknowledge the breach’s severity. “The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” he told reporters.
The Trump Administration has insisted that the messages did not contain classified information. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would not explain the basis for the Administration’s conclusion, instead claiming the controversy was overblown and accusing The Atlantic of spreading misinformation. “Do you trust the Secretary of Defense who was nominated for this role, voted by the United States Senate into this role, who has served in combat, honorably served our nation in uniform,” she said Wednesday, “or do you trust Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a registered Democrat and an anti-Trump sensationalist reporter?”
However, leading Democrats have fiercely rejected the Administration’s dismissals. “It’s baloney. I mean, what world do these people live in?” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tells TIME of the Administration’s claims that the disclosed information was not classified. “When you describe the time, place, type of armaments used—do they think the American public’s stupid?” Warner argued that the leak not only endangered American troops but also undermined trust with key allies. “‘America First’ shouldn’t be America alone, and that’s where we’re headed.”
Asked late Wednesday if he still believes the messages were not classified, Trump said: “You’ll have to ask the people involved…I really don’t know.”
Duckworth, herself a combat veteran, told TIME that the information shared in the chat was, by definition, classified. “Sequencing of the attack and makeup of what platforms we’re using, that is automatically classified information,” she said. “This information was uploaded into an unclassified environment before those pilots were over the target area. If that Signal chain had been hacked, those pilots would have gotten killed.”
In addition to the immediate risk to U.S. troops, Duckworth also raised concerns about long-term diplomatic fallout. “I’m absolutely sure our allies are thinking twice about sharing classified information with us,” she told TIME. “We’ve shown that our Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, NSA are not capable of maintaining security over classified information.”
At a heated House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe defended their participation in the chat, arguing that similar information had been shared with U.S. allies. But their explanations failed to sway Democrats, who accused the Administration of failing to safeguard critical military plans. Rep. Jason Crow noted that the Houthis had successfully shot down drones used in the attack and blamed the Administration for creating a security vulnerability. “It is a leadership failure, and that’s why Secretary Hegseth, who undoubtedly transmitted classified, sensitive, operational information via this chain, must resign immediately,” Crow said.
Republican leadership, however, remained noticeably muted. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Senate Majority Leader who broke with his party in voting against Hegseth’s confirmation, declined to comment when asked by TIME if he believed Hegseth should remain in office. Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and chair of the Senate Intelligence panel, also refused to comment when asked if Hegseth and Waltz should be fired.
Democrats argue that the Signal scandal follows a troubling pattern of careless handling of national security information under President Trump. From his early days in office, Trump repeatedly showed little regard for maintaining the nation’s secrets, to the point that it shifted relationships between the U.S. intel community and those of our strongest allies. In 2017, he shared classified Israeli-passed intelligence with Russia’s foreign minister in a meeting at the White House. “We’re seeing a level of incompetence,” Warner told TIME. “If this was a one off…but this is a pattern.”
Asked about the historical implications of the unfolding scandal, Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat of Massachusetts, told TIME: “It’s such a serious breach of national security, it’s hard to imagine someone surviving. But we’re in the Trump era, and anything goes.”
Despite the mounting pressure, the White House has continued to stand by Hegseth and Waltz. Leavitt, the press secretary, confirmed on Wednesday that the Administration had launched an internal probe into how Goldberg was added to the Signal chat, enlisting the help of Elon Musk and his security team. However, she declined to say whether any officials would be fired. “What I can say definitively is what I just spoke to the president about, and he continues to have confidence in his national security team.”
For many Democrats in Congress, the failure to hold Trump’s national security team accountable signals a broader disregard for truth and accountability. “Their first recourse is always to lie, to cover up, to add a bigger lie on top of a big lie,” Sen. Adam Schiff of California told TIME on Tuesday night. “Whether they can get away with it depends on the American people, and whether they demand more from their representatives in this firehouse of falsehood,” Schiff adds.
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