Trump Downplays Signal Leak, Backing Waltz and Pointing Finger at Journalist

President Trump characterized an extraordinary security breach as a minor transgression on Tuesday, insisting that top administration officials had not shared any classified information as they discussed secret military plans in a group chat that included the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine.

“So this was not classified,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting with U.S. ambassadors at the White House. “Now if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different, but I always say, you have to learn from every experience.”

Mr. Trump also stood by his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who had inadvertently added the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat on the Signal app, which included Vice President JD Vance and others. In the chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information on timing, targets and weapons systems to be used in an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen, according to Mr. Goldberg.

“I think it was very unfair the way they attacked Michael,” the president said of Mr. Waltz.

Former national security officials said they were skeptical that the information shared by Mr. Hegseth ahead of the March 15 strike was not classified, given the life-or-death nature of the operation.

The president and the secretary of defense have the ability to assert, even retroactively, that information is declassified. But officials have refused to answer questions about the specifics of the information or who, exactly, determined that it was unclassified and could be shared on Signal, an encrypted commercial app.

Mr. Hegseth denounced Mr. Goldberg late Monday, saying he had been “peddling hoaxes time and time again.” But on Tuesday morning, testifying in the Senate, the nation’s top two intelligence officials conceded that the exchanges released by The Atlantic were accurate.

During the meeting at the White House, as reporters peppered the president with questions about the leak, Mr. Trump repeatedly turned to Mr. Waltz to answer. Mr. Waltz tried to largely redirect the focus, lauding the strikes in Yemen and attacking Mr. Goldberg.

“This one in particular, I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with,” he said, adding that “we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”

Mr. Trump called Mr. Goldberg a “sleazebag.”

Later on Tuesday, Mr. Waltz told the host Laura Ingraham on Fox News that “I take full responsibility” for the sharing of the plans, adding that he had “built the group” and inadvertently added Mr. Goldberg to it even as he maintained that “I don’t text him, he’s not on my phone.”

But the overall response from Mr. Trump and his allies — downplaying the episode while shifting blame onto an opponent — is a timeworn practice that the administration and its chorus of supporters have deployed throughout the president’s political career as they seek to deflect criticism. Mr. Trump is loath to admit mistakes, and while some Democrats called for Mr. Waltz and Mr. Hegseth to resign, the president seems wary of firing his staff. Doing so could puncture his argument that the early months of his second term have been nothing but success.

“They’ve made a big deal out of this because we’ve had two perfect months,” Mr. Trump said.

The Trump administration’s account directly contradicted the one given in Mr. Goldberg’s explosive report in The Atlantic on Monday. In his article, Mr. Goldberg shared some screenshots and quotes from the group chat, but said he chose not to share the most specific information about strike plans and battle-damage assessments that could be used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.

Mr. Goldberg rejected the Trump administration’s assertions that no classified information was shared, saying simply: “They are wrong.”

Former national security officials who were involved in similar operations in past administrations said they were inclined to agree — even without seeing the messages.

“Any detail or fact about an operation, no matter how small, is going to be classified especially before the operation takes place,” said Chris Meagher, who was a senior official in the Defense Department during the Biden administration. “With an operation like that, there’s no possible way that acknowledging the existence of this mission was not classified.”

During a contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday, Democrats denounced the nation’s top spy chiefs, John Ratcliffe, the director of the C.I.A., and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.

Both of them were included on the Signal chat in question, though Ms. Gabbard initially would not answer questions from senators about whether she had been involved. When Mr. Ratcliffe confirmed his participation, she followed his lead.

“This sloppiness, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies is entirely unacceptable,” Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, said during the hearing, which had been scheduled weeks ago for the presentation of the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment.” “You need to do better.”

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat who is the committee’s vice chair, was visibly angry as he declared that the intelligence officials and others on the group chat had displayed “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior.” Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, suggested Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Waltz should resign. Many Democrats have resurfaced clips of Mr. Waltz and other Trump allies from nine years ago, criticizing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

Mr. Trump had made her handling of those internal State Department messages a major issue in his 2016 campaign, calling for criminal investigations.

During the hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe and Ms. Gabbard acknowledged the sensitivity of information about strike targets, but still insisted no sensitive information from their areas of responsibility had been shared.

Mr. Ratcliffe said it was up to Mr. Hegseth, the defense secretary, to determine what information could be shared in an unclassified chat.

Even if the information was not classified, disclosing it in a nonsecure setting could still violate the 1917 Espionage Act. Under that law, what is known as national defense information does not have to be classified for its exposure to be damaging to the country’s security. The Justice Department rarely prosecutes violations that do not involve classified material, and Mr. Trump has stocked his administration with loyalists who have shown little interest in challenging him or his officials.

“The Atlantic story is nothing more than a section of the NatSec establishment community running the same, tired gameplay from years past,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted on social media.

He added that “at every turn anti-Trump forces have tried to weaponize innocuous actions and turn them into faux outrage that Fake News outlets can use to peddle misinformation. Don’t let enemies of America get away with these lies.”

Other top Trump officials and allies have lashed out at Mr. Goldberg as well.

But several Republicans have expressed concerns about Mr. Goldberg’s inclusion in the chat and acknowledged that it had been a mistake. Most, however, said they wanted a full briefing before drawing any conclusions. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said his panel would look into what had happened, but provided no details.

“We are definitely concerned,” Mr. Wicker told reporters, adding that he and his colleagues on the committee were “considering our options.”

Mr. Goldberg’s report also raised concerns about administration officials using Signal, a nonsecure messaging platform, and setting the messages to automatically delete. The Presidential Records Act, enacted in 1978, states that the government “shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records,” which includes materials the president’s staff create or receive in the course of their official duties.

Mr. Ratcliffe said the White House and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had approved the use of Signal for senior officials, suggesting that because it is encrypted, it was more secure than ordinary phone lines. One of China’s main intelligence services pierced the unencrypted networks of America’s major telecommunications firms last year, giving it access to telephone calls and some texts. Officials have said the move to encourage use of Signal and other encrypted apps was part of an effort to keep China, and other adversaries, from picking up ordinary phone calls.

But Signal is not approved for classified conversations. Those are supposed to take place only over special, secure lines, with the callers speaking from inside a secure facility.

One of Signal’s security features is that users can set messages to disappear after a period of time. On Tuesday, the watchdog group American Oversight filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington seeking a judge’s order to preserve all of the Signal messages on the group chat in question.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, pushed back against concerns about the use of Signal.

“The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” she wrote on social media, without naming them.

Mr. Trump said he would prefer for officials to meet in person, but he defended their use of Signal and suggested the fault for what happened falls on the app, not on Mr. Waltz.

“It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Adam Goldman, Julian Barnes, Robert Jimison and Chris Cameron.