A Republican lawmaker is rejecting White House efforts to downplay the inadvertent sharing of military attack plans with a journalist on an unclassified group chat.
“The White House is in denial that this was not classified or sensitive data,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a former Air Force general and member of the Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday. “They should just own up to it and preserve credibility.”
Bacon’s criticism is a sign that the explanations and deflections coming from President Donald Trump’s administration could be calling flat as new details emerge about the stunning disclosures to Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.
Bacon spoke soon after The Atlantic published additional excerpts of the Signal group chat involving Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, national security adviser Michael Waltz and other top Trump aides. In those messages, Hegseth shares detailed timing, targeting and weapons information for a military strike on Houthi forces in Yemen roughly a half-hour before they were set to begin.
Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration are denying that any classified information was shared.
Testifying to the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday, Gabbard said “it was a mistake” that Goldberg was added to the chat but that “there were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared.” She called it a “standard update … provided alongside updates that were given to foreign partners in the region.”
Waltz said much the same Wednesday in an X post after the new Atlantic reporting: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS.”
One crucial administration ally on Capitol Hill, Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton, also echoed that response Wednesday.
“There’s no locations listed there. There are no sources and methods. There’s no specific targets,” Cotton (R-Ark.) told reporters. “Certainly, there’s nothing called war plans, which was an embellishment and exaggeration by known left wing partisan opponents of the president.”
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a former Army helicopter pilot, rebutted Republicans in a sharply worded X posting Wednesday: “Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.”
Ben Jacobs and Amy Mackinnon contributed to this report.
