Accountability in Trump’s Cabinet After Signal Group Chat Leak

By: Elaine Ruiz

From March 11 to March 15, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was part of a group chat created by high-ranking members of Trump’s cabinet on Signal, where highly-secretive national security topics were shared. Among the chat’s members were Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, top White House staff, three Cabinet secretaries, amongst others. This information was released to the public on March 24, by Jeffrey Goldberg himself, after he noticed that the plans regarding the bombing of Houthi targets across Yemen that were being discussed in the group chat by Pete Hegseth and others were coming to fruition. 

Goldberg had initially believed that the group chat was unauthentic, given the highly classified information in the contents that were being shared in it, however, the bombings in Yemen set off a red light for him. He would go on to realize that two hours prior to the bombings across Yemen that were later known throughout the world on March 15, the attack plan, containing precise information about weapons, targets, and timing, was sent within the Signal group chat. This reveal would go on to become a beginning of yet another episode of complete disarray within the Trump White House, now proposing the question, how certain can one be regarding the protection of top-secret plans and information within this new White House cabinet?

Screenshot of a selection of messages within the “Houthi PC small group” chat. (Goldberg, The Atlantic)

Goldberg details that on March 13, he received a notice on his device that he was included in a Signal chat group called the “Houthi PC small group,” two days after receiving a connection request from a user identified as Michael Waltz (who is the current U.S. national security advisor). This connection request did not seem strange to Goldberg, due to the fact that prior to this, they had met in the past, however, he did find the request surprising, due to the current administration’s relationships and animosity toward press. As the messages started pouring in, with different names to be used as methods to disguise their true identities (although initials which identified the members had already been in use), Goldberg noticed that there were 18 individuals within this text exchange who were high-ranking members of the Trump cabinet, and that he was erroneously added to this extremely secretive text exchange. 

Goldberg, observing the absurd nature of the text exchange, consulted a number of colleagues, in order to discuss the possibility that this text-exchange could be an attempt at a misinformation campaign, due to the fact that it would be incredulous for a text-chain regarding U.S. national security and imminent war plans be open on Signal, and most importantly, would have him in it. However, Goldberg would continue to get information, such as the whereabouts of different members of the text-exchange sent to him only to later have the whereabouts of these individuals confirmed on television. 

All of this became incredibly real in nature for Goldberg, who received highly-classified information in the text-exchange on March 15, given that a message that was sent included the exact times in which several areas within Yemen would be bombed. Ten minutes after the time that was detailed in the text, Goldberg opened X to check if the bombings were real, and surely explosions were being heard at that moment in the capital city of Sanaa. 

Ultimately, Goldberg, after seeing the authenticity of the text-exchange after the bombings across Yemen, removed himself from the text chain. This consequently triggered the confirmation of the text-exchange from the spokesman for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, who detailed that “[they were] reviewing how an inadvertent member was added to the chain” and that the “ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.” 

These breaches in security regarding the handling of highly-sensitive information breaches many guidelines that are put in place to maintain the privacy of information of this nature. This also becomes more complicated due to the fact that Signal is not approved by the government for sharing classified information, rather the use of an SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) in order to prohibit any tampering of information. However, due to the high-ranking individuals within the text-exchange utilizing Signal as a way of communication, this information could have been shared anywhere, allowing for the tampering and communication of highly-sensitive information to be nurtured. In addition to this, some departments such as the Department of Defense prohibit electronic messaging containing sensitive information to classified networks, with intentional violation of these guidelines being met with disciplinary action. 

Another problem that Goldberg noted was the fact that Waltz had set for some of the messages to disappear from a span of 1 to 4 weeks, which raises the question regarding if a possible violation of federal records laws were present, due to the fact that these text messages within the text exchange containing sensitive information are classified as records that should be preserved. 

It is worthy of noticing that Donald Trump has built a base who attacked Hillary Clinton, and oftentimes demanded for her arrest for her usage of a private email server for official business when she was Secretary of State, and that he himself was indicted in 2023 for his mishandling of classified documents, with charges dropped after the election. Currently, the very same individual who had nurtured a base based on the attacks of the extraneous nature regarding the management of sensitive information is entangled in an error of their very own cabinet, possibly committing various illegalities of extremely high nature, with no one accepting responsibility for the carelessness of adding a journalist into a highly-sensitive and secretive text exchange where war plans were being sent without any protections. 

Now, with the White House blaming Goldberg for the mismanagement and possible illegalities within the text-exchange, with no mention of responsibility toward the individual(s) who invited Goldberg into the text-exchange, one must ask themselves where exactly does accountability lie within the White House, and if it even exists at all.