Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has criticized the reported inclusion of an editor for The Atlantic in a group chat of Trump administration officials talking about a U.S. plan to bomb targets in Yemen.
“Sounds like a huge screw up,” Cornyn said to Capitol reporters. “I mean, is there any other way to describe it?”
The Texas Republican also said that he “would hope that the interagency would look at” the reported incident.
“Somebody dropped the ball,” he said.
The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffery Goldberg, was seemingly included in a group chat with members of the Trump administration on Signal where officials talked about details of attacks targeting Houthis in Yemen.
Mike Waltz, a national security advisor for the Trump administration, was seemingly behind Goldberg’s initial invite to the group. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also reportedly sent information like weapons used, targets and timing in the chat two hours prior to the attacks that started on March 15.
The group chat also included Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Goldberg said in the report that he “had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans.”
The Atlantic journalist later stated that he began to think that the chat could be real following a person who was supposedly the Defense secretary telling the others that the first detonations in Yemen were going to be experienced in two hours, lining up with what actually happened.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, gave confirmation that the chat was real.
“This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes said. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
