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U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, called for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisory Michael Waltz to resign after release of the full transcript of a Signal chat that accidentally included a journalist.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported Monday that sensitive details of pending U.S. military action were sent in a group chat on Signal, an encrypted commercial messaging app, of senior Trump administration officials that Waltz accidentally added him to. The Atlantic on Wednesday published the full transcript of the conversation, which included minute-by-minute attack plans ahead of U.S. bombings in Yemen earlier this month. Administration officials had minimized the severity of the breach.
DeGette said “at minimum” Hegseth and Waltz must resign, and she demanded Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe be investigated for perjury after denying on Wednesday that classified information was shared in the chat. DeGette said “it may well be that all of these officials need to be fired.”
“The level of incompetence shown by the Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor is staggering. This is a systemic failure by some of the highest-ranking officials in our government, and if the information shared on this unsecured platform fell into the hands of an adversary, it would have put American servicemembers’ lives at risk,” DeGette said in a statement. “There must be accountability, and their failure to take responsibility while gaslighting the public about what exactly happened demands answers.”
