US President Donald Trump indicated on Tuesday that a colleague who worked for national security adviser Mike Waltz had been involved in adding a journalist to a secret group discussion by US officials about sensitive war plans.
“What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had, I guess Goldberg’s” number, Trump said in an interview with Newsmax, referring to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.
Trump’s administration has sought to contain fallout from an explosive article on Monday by Goldberg, revealing that he was included in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal with Trump’s most senior national security advisors to coordinate on Yemen.
On Tuesday, Waltz on Tuesday claimed “full responsibility” for mistakenly adding The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Goldberg, to the group chat.
“I take full responsibility. I built the group; my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated,” Waltz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in his first interview on the security breach, adding that he does not personally know Goldberg.
