All news
31 Mar, 17:34

Trump's security advisor loses credibility after Signal chat leak — WSJ

Although Trump expressed dissatisfaction with this situation in numerous conversations with his subordinates, accusing his assistant of being responsible for the first major national security crisis under his presidency, the American leader decided against dismissing him, partially not to give rise to attacks from the Democrats and the media

NEW YORK, March 31. /TASS/. US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is falling out of favor with American President Donald Trump and losing influence in the White House after the data leak scandal involving the Signal messenger chat, The Wall Street Journal writes.

According to the paper, it was the presence of Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, in Waltz’ contact list, not adding the journalist to a private chat and making intelligence data public, that was Waltz' biggest snafu in Trump’s eyes.

Although Trump expressed dissatisfaction with this situation in numerous conversations with his subordinates, accusing his assistant of being responsible for the first major national security crisis under his presidency, the American leader decided against dismissing him, partially not to give rise to attacks from the Democrats and the media.

Waltz, the paper says, had already created similar Signal group chats before the Goldberg episode, including to discuss a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.

Goldberg said on March 24 that on March 11 he received a request to connect to the Signal from a user with the nickname Mike Waltz. Two days later, the journalist received a notification to join a group chat where members of the US administration discussed strikes on Yemen. According to the journalist, on March 15, a user named Pete Hegseth (the name of the US Secretary of Defense) posted a message with details of the upcoming strikes against the Houthis and the ETA to the start of the strikes, which, according to Goldberg, coincided with the time of publication of the first messages on social networks about the bombing. On March 15, the United States, on Trump's orders, began launching massive strikes against the targets of Houthis who control about a third of Yemen's territory.

The US Democratic Party regarded the data leak as a major failure in the work of the part of the Republican Trump administration responsible for ensuring national security. Some in the US Congress and the American expert community have called for Waltz and some other figures of the presidential team to be dismissed.