Republicans in Congress are increasingly pressing the Trump administration for more answers about the leak of the military’s plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen, pressure that was highlighted by a call from the Senate’s Armed Services Committee chairman for the Defense Department’s acting inspector general to conduct an investigation.
The effects of The Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s accidental inclusion in a group chat with senior members of President Donald Trump’s national security team reverberated through the halls of Congress this week, and Republicans had to decide how far they wanted to go in publicly criticizing members of Trump’s team. As more details emerged, and as two Capitol Hill hearings found some of the principals involved less than forthcoming, Republicans seemed less willing to downplay the controversy.
Most notably, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker did not buy White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s argument that officials didn’t send classified information in the Signal group chat that included Vice President J.D. Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, among others members of Trump’s Cabinet. Those in the chat deliberated about striking the Houthis to protect shipping lanes, and Hegseth shared details that included the timing of air strikes.
“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,” Wicker told reporters. He and Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, sent a joint letter Wednesday to the Defense Department’s acting inspector general, requesting an inquiry into the creation of the group chat and answers about whether its members followed the department’s policies surrounding classified information.
Wicker told reporters he and Reed also wanted a classified meeting with an administration official in a secure location about the incident. “We’ve agreed to seek time relatively soon for a classified briefing to the Armed Services Committee in the SCIF, and I expect we’ll be able to do that,” he said, referencing a facility in which government officials can appropriately share classified and sensitive information. “We’re going to try to negotiate with the administration to make sure that we get a senior person to come and actually do that briefing.” Asked if he wanted that “senior person” to be Hegseth, he did not go that far, but he said he wanted someone who “actually has the facts and can speak on behalf of the administration.”
Other senators also have expressed skepticism about the claim that the information shared was not classified. “That information should not have been shared on that platform,” Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, told reporters. Intelligence Committee member Sen. Todd Young said he was working to get more information from the White House. “There’s some unanswered questions still about the whole episode, and we’ll continue to work with the administration to get clarity on some of these unanswered questions,” he told The Dispatch.
The administration has insisted that there were no “war plans” accessible to Goldberg, which is how he originally described them. He called them “attack plans” in a follow-up story, a change that Hegseth seized on to criticize the journalist. For some Republicans on Capitol Hill, there’s no real distinction. Rounds told reporters he did not “know the difference” between the two. Rep. Don Bacon, a former Air Force brigadier general who has been especially critical of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy even before the group chat episode, said the administration was “being silly” on both the issue of “war plans” and that of classified information.
“They’re trying to parse words out,” the Nebraska Republican told The Dispatch. “They said it’s not classified. Well, it’s not classified now because we’ve already hit the targets. So, they’re playing word games. They’re digging a hole, and they’re hurting their own credibility. They ought to just say, ‘It was wrong. We learned from our mistake.’ And by the way, the mission was great. The big picture—we did good work, and the Houthis deserved to be dealt with.”
Amid the fallout, there has also been something of a blame game taking place not just in the Capitol and White House, but on the political right more broadly, and it has broken down along ideological lines. Those who favor a more isolationist foreign policy are blaming Waltz for the snafu, citing the fact that he created the group chat that included Goldberg. Waltz has claimed he does not know the journalist and has indicated that Goldberg somehow managed to add himself to the chat.
Sean Davis of The Federalist is a pro-Trump commentator who has been immensely critical of aid to Ukraine, saying it could be “inciting World War III.” “Trump may still trust Waltz, but I guarantee you very few others who have to work with Waltz trust him right now, and for good reason,” he tweeted Tuesday. “Even in direct personal conversations in SCIFs or the White House, I guarantee top officials will be far less open with their views given that they now know who Waltz talks to when nobody is looking.”
That attitude matches reports about White House aides being dissatisfied with Waltz’s actions.
Meanwhile, GOP members of Congress who favor a more hawkish foreign policy are coming to the defense of Waltz, who once served as an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney in the George W. Bush administration and has made arguments for a strong American posture on the world stage.
“I agree with President @realDonaldTrump that @MikeWaltz47is an invaluable member of his national security team and that he should continue to serve the President and our country,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina posted on X.
Bacon offered perhaps the most explicit defense of the national security adviser. “His mistake was adding on a journalist,” he told The Dispatch of Waltz, whom Bacon referred to as a friend. “We’ve all made mistakes like that. The real mistake was putting classified information on an unclassified system. And so, to me, Mike didn’t intentionally do that. He made a mistake, should have been more cautious. He’s actually owned up to it. It’s putting the classified information on it that’s the real error here.”
Does Bacon believe a Waltz departure would make the Trump administration less hawkish?
“I think we need Mike Waltz’s voice,” he said. “I think he brings us an important voice, so we would lose something, not having them there.”
