Russia May Already Have Accessed Group Chat, Ex-Official Warns
One of the group chat members was in Moscow at the time.

Trump officials made an obvious critical error when they accidentally added a journalist earlier this month to a Signal group chat discussing the specifics of an imminent attack on Houthi targets in Yemen. But they made another profound mistake by potentially inadvertently sharing the details of the battle plan with one of America’s longest adversaries.
The Trump administration’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff was in Russia when he was added to the chat on the retail app, a mistake that intelligence experts say basically hand-delivered news of the attack to the Kremlin hours before it took place.
“The Russians have whatever Witkoff was doing or saying on his personal cell phone,” former national security adviser Susan Rice told MeidasTouch Tuesday. “There should never have been a Signal chat used as the vehicle for a discussion involving anything sensitive regarding national security. The Russians undoubtedly have it.”
The Atlantic, whose editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg witnessed the chat unfold first-hand, released uncensored screenshots of the Signal exchange Wednesday morning after several top Trump officials disparaged the outlet, insisting that the attack details were not confidential.
Some of those details included down-to-the-minute scheduling for the launch of U.S. F-18 attack planes toward Yemen, “trigger based” strikes, and the launch of sea-based subsonic cruise missiles.
It also included some of America’s top officials reacting to news of the airstrikes with fire, fist, and American flag emojis.
The monumental slip-up was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.
The Trump administration has offered conflicting excuses to sidestep The Atlantic’s report, including claiming that the chat never happened (despite a National Security Council spokesperson that confirmed its existence). The admin changed its tune Wednesday after the release of screenshots from the chat, with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz—who created the chat and added Greenberg—claiming that the story was false because it didn’t include weapons (it did), methods (again, it did), and what he described as “war plans.”
“BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests,” Waltz wrote.