‘An Extraordinary Twist’: Here’s How The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg Was Added to Waltz and Hegseth’s Secret Signal Chat – Report
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Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg revealed last month he’d been mistakenly added to a sensitive national security Signal chat with top administration officials, questions about how such a major breach could happen weren’t immediately answered. But new reporting now indicates the mistake was due to an iPhone mistake by a member of the Trump administration — months before the chat was even created.
In a chat on the Signal messaging app involving Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Vice President JD Vance, among others, the presence of The Atlantic’s editor went unnoticed until he revealed the information himself in an article published in March.
Since that time reporting and investigations into what the media dubbed SignalGate have covered questions about security and whether other national security discussions have taken place on messaging apps, as the President Donald Trump and his administration have downplayed the significance of the breach.
On Sunday, in an exclusive report, The Guardian revealed via sources how it all happened in the first place. Calling it an “extraordinary twist,” the report explains it was an erroneous contact update after an email from Goldberg regarding another negative article about Trump was forwarded to, and then texted by, then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, now NSC spox:
According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.
Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.
The Guardian writes that, “according to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a ‘contact suggestion update’ by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.”
An email from a member of the media about a story was forwarded from the campaign to a spokesperson, who copied and pasted the content of the email into a text to Waltz, and Waltz accidentally saved the phone number from the original email as the contact info for Hughes, and got added to the chat by the phone number.
Although Signal identified Goldberg as “JG” despite Waltz’s phone contacts, no one noticed.
CBS adds that Waltz texted and called Hughes at his correct phone number several times in between the erroneous contacts update and the invitation to the secret chat group, but with both numbers saved for the contact, it was the second, incorrect one that was invited to the group.
Read more from The Guardian here.
