WASHINGTON, April 1. /TASS/. The White House considers the Signal messenger chat room data leak scandal a closed case, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, adding that measures have been taken to ensure that such a situation does not happen again.
"As the president has made clear, [presidential national security advisor] Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team, and this case has been closed here at the White House," she told reporters.
"As far as we are concerned, there have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again," Leavitt pointed out. "And we're moving forward, and the president and Mike Waltz and his entire national security team have been working together very well," the spokeswoman concluded.
On March 24, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published an article in which he said he received a request to join Signal, an encrypted messaging app, from a "Mike Waltz" on March 11. He was then included in a group chat dubbed "Houthi PC small group" with what appeared to be other top administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and others.
For several days, "a fascinating policy discussion" was conducted in the chat, the article said. According to the editor, on March 15, user "Pete Hegseth" posted a message that contained details of planned strikes against the Houthis, including targets, weapons, and the estimated time of the start of the strikes, which, according to Goldberg, coincided with the time of publication of the first messages about the bombing on social networks.