Atlantic reporter group chat with defense leaders: U.S. Senator James Lankford, other lawmakers react

On Monday, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief at The Atlantic, published a story detailing how last week he was somehow included in a group text thread (on the Signal app) with the Trump administration’s intelligence and defense leaders who were discussing details of upcoming retaliatory strikes on the Houthis. The White House has since verified that the text thread Goldberg revealed in the story appears to be genuine. Democrats have seized on this issue as a very serious breach of national security and an example of the administration’s recklessness, while Republicans are downplaying its significance and insist classified information was not included in the thread.

The following are quotes today from Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Virginia Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), both of whom sit on the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence. An already scheduled Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday allowed Democrats to grill national security and intelligence officials about the incident.

Sen: Lankford Reacts to group text:

“The Houthis had attacked American warships 174 times and had had very little response from the United States. President Trump, a week ago, said we are not going to allow the Houthis to launch missiles at American warships over and over and over again and not respond. So, there’s a very strong response to be able to make that stop. So, that pushes us back to a position of, ‘you’re not going to attack America, or Americans, and not have a response from America.’

“That Signal app is an encrypted app that is used by quite a few folks in government…the biggest challenge they had there is somehow a reporter got invited into that conversation, who should never have been in that very private conversation about scheduling, about who’s going to actually coordinate some of the things. And then at the end, apparently Pete Hegseth was saying, ‘Hey, be prepared because within the next hour, we’re going to launch an attack.’ There’s all this conversation about (what was discussed on the app) being war plans that are in detail—apparently what it was, was literally a heads up to some of the folks that are in government to say ‘we’re about to actually launch the attack that we’ve talked about in other classified settings’, so I’m not finding any classified information. The biggest mistake on this is that someone outside of a group of national security, whether it’s a reporter or anyone else, was included and that it was not stopped or detained or prevented from being inside of that conversation—that should’ve been picked up much earlier, that’s a major mistake.”

Sen. Warner reacts to group text:

“What we just saw was a remarkable display of dodging and weaving on what is one of the worst intelligence failures of recent time, and this isn't a one-off. This is the same crowd that inadvertently released the identity of hundreds of CIA agents. This is the same crowd that regularly posts, oftentimes through Elon Musk’s activities, classified information. This is the same crowd that has no respect for the privacy rights of Americans. And we didn't even get an apology. We didn't even get an acknowledgement that ‘oh yes. If the Houthis had gotten this information, they could have repositioned their defenses and American lives could have been — and probably would have been — lost. It's irresponsible. It's an example of the kind of sloppiness and carelessness that, you know, just encompasses this whole administration's approach. And what it leads to is….it leads to deterioration of morale in the workforce. It leads to increasing American partners unwilling to share intelligence with us. ‘America first’ cannot mean America alone. But that is where this administration is headed. That makes us less safe. It makes the men and women of the intelligence community less safe because they are. Secrecy is compromised often…If Secretary Hegseth let this information out, he should resign. There's got to be accountability.”