National security adviser Mike Waltz accepted “full responsibility’ Tuesday for an extraordinary security breach in which the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine ended up in a group chat where Trump administration officials discussed a military strike against the Houthis in Yemen.
“A staffer wasn’t responsible. And look, I take full responsibility. I built the group to make – my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated,” Mr. Waltz said in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
The interview was Mr. Waltz’s first since Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was included in a text exchange on Signal, an encrypted text messaging app, where top officials in the Trump administration planned the March 15 airstrikes.
Mr. Waltz said he didn’t know how Mr. Goldberg’s number ended up on his phone, claiming he didn’t know him at all.
“I can tell you for 100%, I don’t know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation and he really is the bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don’t text him. He wasn’t on the phone and we are going to figure out how this happened,” Mr. Waltz said.
He added that he’s tapped tech billionaire Elon Musk and his team to look into how Mr. Goldberg was looped into the text change.
When pressed on how such a massive security breach could happen, Mr. Waltz responded, “that’s what we are trying to find out.”
“So, of course I didn’t see this loser in the group,” he said, referring to Mr. Goldberg. “It looked like someone else.”
