Reporter Digs Up Photo of Waltz Standing Next to Goldberg at 2021 Event He Moderated After NSA Adviser Claims He Never Met Him

Screenshot via X.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has insisted that he “never met” Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg in the wake of his stunning reporting on a leaked Signal chat, but it did not take long for a reporter to dig up photographic evidence to the contrary.

On Monday, Goldberg published an article detailing how Waltz had accidentally added him in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal that included top level national security agency officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, as they discussed attack plans and messaging strategies related to striking the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month. The chat apparently included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and other intelligence agency and White House officials.

Like Trump, Waltz has defended himself by lobbing insults at Goldberg. The NSA adviser and former Florida congressman made several comments expressing confusion about how Goldberg’s number was in his phone as well as insisting he had “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Goldberg.

Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower found an October 2021 tweet from French activist and filmmaker Bernard-Henri Lévy about a film Q&A event for his documentary, The Will to See, that contradicted Waltz’s claims.

“Michael Waltz claimed that he’s ‘never met, don’t know, never communicated with’ Jeffrey Goldberg,” wrote Bower. “Here’s a photo of Waltz standing next to Goldberg during a 2021 event at the French Embassy. The event Waltz attended—a Q&A with a French filmmaker—was moderated by Goldberg.”

Bower included a screenshot of Lévy’s tweet and also one showing a zoomed in view of the photo, with Waltz and Goldberg standing right next to each other.

Here is Lévy’s original tweet, thanking the then-French ambassador to the U.S., Phillippe Étienne, for hosting the event at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., as well as several other attendees, including Goldberg and Waltz, who were both tagged in the tweet.

Several defenders of Waltz have questioned whether he really can be accused of knowing Goldberg because of just one brief moment captured in a photograph, but other details from the event make those claims seem shaky.

It would have been difficult to attend this event and not be aware of Goldberg’s participation, as it was promoted with Goldberg’s name prominently featured as the moderator, like in the below tweet by The Atlantic’s official account showing both men’s photographs side-by-side of equal size and the title of the event as “A conversation with Bernard-Henri Lévy and Jeffrey Goldberg.”

Video from a livestream of that conversation is posted under several accounts on YouTube, including those for both Lévy and The Atlantic. In the nearly hour-long clip posted by The Atlantic, the only two people on stage are Goldberg on the left and Lévy on the right. After some brief technical issues with the microphone, Goldberg thanks the ambassador and “my colleagues at The Atlantic” before kicking off with the questions.

Watch the video above via The Atlantic on YouTube.